


Dust to Dust

by prettywords



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Gen, Multi, Piles and piles of it, Ruby grows up without her Uncle Qrow, Spoilers, Tragedy, and in the most painful way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2018-09-27 17:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 59,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10036376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettywords/pseuds/prettywords
Summary: "She couldn't save him." Ruby learns to control the Silver Eyes. (Post-Volume 4 AU)





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: ANGST. Piles and piles of angst. This will probably be three or four chapters long. Spoilers abound.

Dust to Dust

~~~

She couldn't save him.

The memory robs her of all breath, like a blade sunken deep between her ribs. She had seen Mistral's lush hills, the brightening sky, all the relief coursing through her veins stealing her strength away. She'd squeezed his hand, both of them sticky with blood.

_We made it, Uncle Qrow._

His fingers twitch and she knows he hears her. He sighs once and his hand goes lax and she thinks he must be just as relieved. She squints out at the city, trying to gauge the distance left. She hadn't even looked at him.

It isn't until they land that Jaune suddenly grabs her shoulder, yelling that Uncle Qrow isn't breathing. His face is bone-white, his lips blue, the blood seeping through the bandages is a dark, ugly violet. Time grows slow and thick like molasses. Ruby stares, feeling nothing when a patrolman shoves her aside to start CPR. Jaune steadies her, large hand gentle on her arm.

A group of people are soon crouched over him. Someone pulls her back, speaks to her. Jaune. She can't understand a word. Sirens wail from far away. _This isn't happening_ , she thinks and then suddenly she's at the hospital.

She sees them press a mask to Uncle Qrow's face and continue to do chest compressions. They must've tried for hours.

He never woke up again.

~~~

Ruby doesn't remember the next few days—the pitying faces of doctors and nurses, Jaune, Nora and Ren blurring together. She's hugged several times, quilts draped over her shoulders and "I'm so sorry, Miss Rose, there was nothing more we could do."

She runs to the kingdom outskirts to avoid them—Uncle Qrow's tattered cape spread across her lap, trembling hands clutching the fabric tight enough to tear. It smells of whiskey and blood and forest skies. Ruby feels like she can't breathe, like she's suddenly forgotten how to.

It occurs to her over and over again that they hadn't said goodbye.

~~~

Dad and Yang arrive at some point. Jaune must've contacted them, because she doesn't remember doing it herself, though she doesn't remember eating or getting dressed or even moving either. She keeps thinking Uncle Qrow has just stepped out or is only a call away. His voice, tired drunken slur that it is, echoes through her skull and pounds against her heart.

Yang is already crying when they first see each other. She hugs Ruby tight enough to crush and her new arm is heavy and cold and glints beneath the fluorescent lights.

"Ruby," she whispers, choking, "Oh god, I'm so sorry..."

Guilt lurks in the shadows of her voice, and a small horrible corner of Ruby is glad. Yang let her go, too caught up in her own pain, and if she had been there then maybe…Uncle Qrow wouldn't have…if she had only been there…

Rationally, Ruby knows there's a disconnect in her thoughts, that this isn't Yang's fault or the doctors' or even her own. But her heart doesn't care. It only knows that Uncle Qrow is gone. That he's not here anymore. Not _anywhere_ anymore. That she'll never see him again.

Ruby closes her eyes and winds her arms around her sister. She hugs her back, even though part of her wants to grab Yang by the shirt and scream, _"Where were you I needed you where were you where wereyou wherewereyou…"_ Ruby closes her eyes. She wonders if she's a bad person. If perhaps she's crying too. She is so numb and broken inside that she can't tell.

Dad is pale and dark-circled. He speaks with the doctors at length and then he just stands in the hallway, gaze far into the distance. Strangely, it is the sight of him, the memory of him looking this same way years ago, that sends the first real pang through her chest. The first real…anything.

"Dad?" she whispers.

He looks at her and it takes a minute for anything coherent to register in his eyes. But then he smiles, papery thin, and gestures her over. His hug is gentle and strong fingers bury in her hair.

"It's not your fault, Ruby," he says simply, a tremble in his voice, "He wouldn't have blamed you, not ever, so don't do it to yourself, okay? Please."

Ruby is silent, pressing the side of her pallid cheek to her father's chest. His heartbeat roars like a dragon in agony. He wants her to forgive herself.

She wants to ask him how.

~~~

They burn Uncle Qrow away. Her father explains why repeatedly, eyes worried and fearful. She doesn't know why he feels the need. Uncle Qrow hated Mistral. It brought him nothing but pain. It hadn't been his home. These are all the reasons Ruby needs.

The crematorium is dark and deserted, with only a spindly mortician present who steps away to give them privacy. The air is overly clean, as if in overcompensation. She has smelled only the cloying, metallic scent of venom for so long that her head spins from the change.

Uncle Qrow is wrapped in a silver shroud.

Yang's throat is bobbing, her eyes wide and glassy with tears. Their father stands in the middle, an arm wrapped around each of them. She can feel his nails digging through the fabric of her shirt, as if hands scrabbling for purchase on a cliff side.

They stare at the body for a long, long time. Not speaking, even though she can see Yang's lips part as if she wants to. Ruby can see the shape of her uncle's arm, lying loose and limp beneath the cloth. She can see his hand, the same long deft one that had corrected her battle stance or checked Crescent Rose's gear-work for jams. A hum starts vibrating through Ruby's head.

Eventually, the mortician comes back. He loads the slate up to the black incinerator and the steel door opens. Inside, the orange beasts snarl with hunger. Yang makes a quiet noise, a desolate cry that somehow echoes across the dull heat and loud, trembling hum. Her father is rigid, like there's a gun prodding into his spine and it's the only reason he's standing at all. The hum returns, deafening, full-force. Her eyes are terribly, painfully dry.

And then Ruby's Uncle Qrow is fed to the flames.

His hair, his voice, his smile. His long, deft hands. The way he'd lifted her onto his knee for stories, bouncing her high whenever the characters rode horse-back. _Klip and Klop Klip and Klop_. How he'd washed her face clean of flour and patched the rips in her hood. The scratch of his stubble. The calloused palm offered on long walks home. How he hummed slow, sad songs without even knowing it when he dried dishes. All this too was burned away.

He was her Uncle Qrow—strange and wild and sometimes a million miles stuck in the past. He had loved her like no one ever would again.

The furnace door clangs shut. Ruby will hear the sound in her dreams for many years to come.

~~~

The mortician brings out the ashes. He hands Dad a yellowed receipt and the stainless steel jar. "I'm sorry for your loss," he says and shuts the door.

Yang hugs her close. Her arm is freezing to the touch and she smells of the crematorium's antiseptic. Ruby is torn between wriggling away and clinging back as if she's drowning.

Dad walks up to them, not really seeing them. "Girls," he murmurs, holding their uncle's remains with both hands. The fragments of him. Every shard of his bones. Every speck of rust in his eyes. All of Uncle Qrow crammed into a little metal jar.

Dad begins down the street without waiting for them to follow.

~~~

They stay in Mistral for an indeterminate amount of time.

Ruby fits herself into a window alcove, hugging her knees, the tattered cape across her thighs. It rains endlessly and she watches the streets ripple with swathes of water droplets.

Out in the hallway, Dad is speaking softly into his scroll. He's made a lot of different calls and she recognizes the names sometimes like Professor Port and Oobleck and several teachers from Signal. His voice grows hushed when he speaks to Professor Goodwitch, low and slightly cracked. He talks to her longer than the others and the words are not all stemmed in grief.

Uncle Qrow had left many secrets behind—some of which she suspects her father knew and some that sound as if he's trying to piece together now.

Ruby presses her forehead against the glass. The night before the fire paints across her vision, Uncle Qrow's hunched form and raspy voice as he spoke of gods and brothers. He'd been dying then already. Out of the searing ache of his own pain Jaune had yelled at him and in a moment of disappointment, Ruby had let him.

And he'd taken it. Sitting on the log, with his tired, sunken gaze and arm wrapped tight across that damning wound. She had seen the remorse in his eyes as he'd regarded Jaune, or Ren and Nora sitting mute and bewildered. How he'd gazed at her with all the regret and sorrow of the world. In hindsight, she wonders if he had been just as lost as they'd been, with Ozpin and Beacon gone, war looming, and this terrible, alien being—Salem.

She wonders if he had been afraid. Uncle Qrow, who wasn't afraid of anything.

"Ruby?"

Yang's voice is amiable and calm, with a tray of food in hand judging by the clink of silverware. Ruby doesn't turn around.

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten all day."

She grips the cape, knuckles whitening. "No."

Yang doesn't argue, merely setting the tray on a nearby table. She lingers though, feet shuffling, seemingly gathering the courage to speak. When she does, it's the first time she's heard hesitation in her sister's voice.

"Sis…we should probably talk…about what happened…"

"I don't want to talk."

A sigh. "I'm not saying now. But…eventually…when you're ready."

Ruby is silent. She wishes Yang would get out already and it frightens her how hostile the thoughts are. Yang doesn't leave though. Perhaps it's guilt that motivates her now, to reach out with the utmost of sincerity.

"You were so brave, you know, and strong."

"Who cares?" the words break right through Ruby, "It hadn't mattered." Nothing had.

"Of course it mattered. If I'd been there—"

"But you weren't."

Everything goes still, until the patter of rain against the window is more of a thundering. Ruby turns to her older sister, teeth clenched, ice sweeping across the shattered parts of her heart.

"You weren't there," she whispers, "You weren't there even though I asked you to be. You didn't care _enough_ and now it's too late."

Deep down, in some distant part of her, Ruby realizes that she is being childish and cruel. It knows lashing out won't make her feel better or change anything, despite how tempting it is. The shame will come later, but for now she can't bring herself to listen.

And Yang, her sister of fire and gold, only looks at her.

"I know you're hurting," she says finally, "And I know you didn't mean it. But he was mine too, Ruby. I wish you'd remember that."

There is not a trace of anger in her eyes—just something sad and gentle. Losing an arm only seems to have made Yang stronger, lovelier, and Ruby thinks of how unfair it is, because she has lost a part of herself too and it's only made her weaker and uglier than ever before.

~~~

The first nightmare begins during the day.

_Purpling blood soaks her knees, singeing the edges of her cloak. Crimson rain blinds her vision, soaking into the forest's ruined trails. A black haze curtains the area. There is a hole in her uncle's stomach as she crouches over his prone form—one she finds herself plugging with bare hands._

_The venom stings her skin, makes her nose burn and he leaks out between the cracks of her fingers. Her voice is gone. She cannot scream._

_Tyrian's face floats in the darkness—a grinning, ghoulish mask with laughter that echoes and echoes and echoes—_

"Ruby? Ruby, wake up!"

She jolts upright, hand already groping for Crescent Rose before the world can even come into focus.

"Whoa, easy!" There is a flash of blonde and blue. Ruby's eyes snap open wide and the afternoon sun comes spilling in. Jaune is practically hovering on top of her, features alarmed and pinched with worry.

"Hey, you with me?"

He's too close and she leans back, spine pressing against rough bark and the sound of shedding leaves shivering in her ears. Then she remembers. She had waited for her father to make another trip to Haven and Yang to the market, before slipping away here. Back to this lone ash tree at the outskirts of the kingdom.

She pushes Jaune away, missing the second of hurt in his expression and scrambles to her feet.

"I'm okay," she whispers, and can't even hear herself over the ringing in her ears. She isn't fooling anyone, least of all Jaune, who is too smart and understands too much, but is also kind enough not to comment.

"What are you doing out here?" he asks instead, gesturing at the barren hill and browned weeds, "Doesn't seem like the best place to take a nap."

She laughs weakly, the sound like brittle paper. "Yeah, I, um, I guess I haven't been sleeping too well lately. Must have nodded off."

It's not exactly an answer and Jaune's eyes soften with sympathy as he gazes her. Ruby scrambles to change the subject before he can say anything.

"A-Anyway, what are _you_ doing here, Jaune? I thought you, Ren and Nora were going with my dad to Haven."

At this, Jaune rubs the back of his neck, expression growing more confused and anxious.

"Right, uh, well not exactly. Things are apparently pretty complicated now. The headmaster won't meet with anyone but your dad."

She blinks. "What? Why?"

He hesitates, gazing sliding from her and back again. "Qrow…he must've known something important. I think he's hoping your dad knows too."

They are silent. The wind howls and the tree's boughs moan from the gale. Ruby's hood unfurls towards the sky like a pair of blood-red wings.

"Oh," she says.

Jaune nods, looking down at her carefully. "Yeah. I don't suppose you ever—"

"No."

Uncle Qrow had had his mysteries and she is only just beginning to realize how powerful they are and how many. Things he had probably known even back in Patch, when he'd been tickling her feet and trucking her along on his shoulders. Even then. She didn't know what he'd been thinking, why he'd felt the need to take the weight of Remnant upon himself, or why he never saw it fit to trust her with any of it.

_…look, this has nothing to do with trust…_

She swallows, staring at the dead clumps of grass as Jaune scratches the back of his head.

"Okay," he says, softly.

There is more silence. And then, as if it slips right out between his teeth…

"Ruby, I know you're sick of hearing it, but…I wanted to say I'm sorry. About what I said to him. About everything."

Ruby's lips purse into a thin, colorless line. "You don't have to, Jaune."

"No, please, listen," his voice is small and desperate, "I was just…I was just mad and confused and he was right there. I said things that I shouldn't have. He was your uncle, he had his reasons and I was wrong."

Something aches in Ruby. She doesn't want to hear this.

"It's okay, Jaune," she offers anyway, "You did your best and helped when you could. Don't apologize to me."

The words sound so stupid even as she's saying them. Trying one's best doesn't mean anything—not if it isn't enough. She had tried her best too…

It's so stupid. When did it start sounding so stupid?

"The same goes for you." Jaune's warm hand touches her shoulder. Concerned blue eyes gaze down at her.

"It wasn't your fault," he says, "None of it was. Getting angry, trying to blame someone, torturing yourself with all the 'what-ifs' in the world—you think it's going to fill you somehow, help somehow, but it doesn't and only makes it worse in the end."

A river of the past glittered in his eyes—golden armor, flaming hair, a lonely smile. Heat sears the back of Ruby's eyes. She has to breathe consciously to stop herself from gasping and just barely succeeds.

"I have to go," she whispers and then runs as far and fast as her Semblance can take her.

~~~

He wouldn't want to see her like this.

For all his skepticism, Uncle Qrow had believed in something. He'd always been so practical and never would've tried if he hadn't. It is just the actual belief part that had not been so practical. She supposes some piece of Uncle Qrow had been fond of the huntsman's creed, no matter how many times he'd groused that it was nonsense and the foolish fantasies of a child.

Maybe that was why when she used to run up to him and hug his legs, proclaiming that she wanted to save people and be a hero, he would look at her with such love. Heroes weren't real, but monsters very well were and he had loved her for trying to prove him wrong.

Uncle Qrow had believed in something.

She still isn't sure exactly what it was—only that it'd been huge and important and had taken him away.


	2. II.

II.

~~~

Yang is very quiet one day. She sets the food tray down, switching out the old one that has been largely untouched. Usually, she fills the process with chatter—idle talk about her trips to the market like the wares of the armorer, the new dust shipments, or a volume of fairytales thick enough to be a doorstopper. Ruby barely listens and she knows Yang is aware of it, but she doesn't stop.

Until today that is.

Her eyes are distant and opaque, like smooth lavender stone. Ruby leans against the window, not having the energy to ask what is wrong.

She watches her sister walk around, straightening the room, pushing back the panes next to the alcove so sunlight and wind can pour in. She leans her hands on the sill and her full hair blows loose across her shoulders, flowing like fields of wheat.

"I think I saw Blake today," she says.

Ruby stares.

"In the street crowds," Yang continues, "I can't be sure, because she disappeared a second later, but…I feel like it was her." She is gazing out at the sprawl of Mistral with unwavering eyes, as if trying to scrutinize every corner of the kingdom. Her voice is odd and bemused.

"She doesn't wear the bow anymore."

The corner of her lips are tilted, almost a smile. The cold and futile rage that had hardened her eyes has lifted. The bright bleed of betrayal in her heart threaded back together. Ruby remembers Blake at Beacon's fall, her white face marred with tears, the broken edge of her voice. She had clutched Yang's remaining hand as if afraid she would never find it again.

Strange, Ruby notes with some empty irony, the things they ended up having in common.

She rests her chin on her knees and tells herself she should be happy. Blake, dark and beautiful and guilt-ridden, is alive. She had disappeared and left no reasons, but she is alive. Ruby should be happy.

Yet she doesn't know what to say. Regardless, Yang doesn't seem to expect a response.

Gathering up the tray, her sister heads for the open door. It is only when her hand has rested on the knob that Ruby finally speaks.

"Do you still believe bad things just happen?"

Yang turns to look at her—half like she wants to pretend ignorance to the question, but of course she doesn't. Can't.

"I'm not sure anymore," she says, "Do you?"

"I don't know," Ruby says, eyes wide, frightened in a way that makes Yang splinter inside, "I don't want to, Yang."

Her voice is breathy and hitched as if she's crying, but there are no tears. She is as dry as a patch of burning skin, crinkled and agonizing to the touch. It takes Yang a moment to reply, but when she does it is measured and honest.

"Someone told me that a long time ago. I think he had to deal with a lot of bad stuff for a long time and it just… became his way of seeing things," she pins Ruby with a steely look, full of unspoken thoughts, "But that doesn't mean it has to be mine or yours."

And then the door is clicking shut behind her, leaving Ruby in the tide of her words.

~~~

Construction workers trudge pass her window once, loaded with great armfuls of metallic dust containers. They're teasing each other and complaining about the bulk of these last minute shipments.

Schnee Dust Company is emblazoned on the front of the cases in spiraling script. The workers talk about Jacque Schnee's charity concert ("the pretty young heiress had sung") and one of them brandishes an old pamphlet.

Ruby's stomach dives and before she knows it, she's running outside.

"Could I have that?" she asks, "Please."

The man blinks at her, but there must be a crack in her expression or a note in her voice that makes him simply nod. He hands it over without a word.

Weiss is on the inside cover. She's wearing a rippled dress and weighted with jewelry that she hates. Yet still, she is as elegant and breath-taking as ever. And sad.

A great chasm of something opens in Ruby's chest. It is raw and painful, but she welcomes it because the feeling is better than nothing at all. Their last words to each other were a jumbled rush, heightened by panic and desperation as Beacon Tower fell. They hadn't meant or conveyed anything.

The pamphlet crinkles as Ruby's fingers tighten.

She wonders if Weiss ever thinks about them. If she misses them with the same blazing and blind intensity Ruby is consumed by every day.

It is later that night that her dad tells her Atlas is closing its borders.

~~~

_White frost laces the stiff ground, a powdery blanket of tiny crystals that come up to Ruby's knees._

_Uncle Qrow walks through first and she hops after in his footprints. He use to pick her up if the snow was too deep, but she's a big girl now and doesn't need to be carried. Besides, Uncle Qrow tends to wander off a lot and it's so much easier to find him like this._

Where are we going, Uncle Qrow? _She asks his back._

_It was always something. A crack in the roof tiles, the patio slicked up with ice. The power lines snapped once under a blizzard gale. Bad things around here seem to always happen at the same time and it makes Uncle Qrow really annoyed and tired and a little sad._

_He's very good at fixing stuff though and Ruby feels kind of bad for really liking these trips outdoors. It's just that Yang hates the cold and Daddy doesn't want to do anything anymore but sleep and so she has Uncle Qrow all to herself._

_She jumps into another one of his footprints, tottering slightly on her toes because of how deep and big it is. With wind-milling arms, she steadies herself. The laces of one of her boots have come undone. She frowns down at them. Her uncle always makes her wear these stupid heavy shoes outside, even though she thinks her hood is already very warm. It's one of the few 'uncool' things about him, though his overall coolness still balances it out._

_Mumbling and cheeks slightly puffed, she kneels and takes hold of the laces, trying clumsily to re-tie them. Uncle Qrow had showed her how to make loops and holes and said just tangling everything together wouldn't make a strong knot. Her fingers are too short and she can't tie it as fast or as neatly as him, but she does succeed after some struggling._

_With a cry of triumph, she twirls around, wiggling her foot._

Uncle Qrow! Look, I did a knot!

_Her smile vanishes when she realizes the distance he has made in the meantime, almost at the horizon, a dark silhouette with a splash of red against the snow._

…Uncle Qrow?

_Panic squeezes her heart and she drops her leg, rushing after him as fast as she can. The snow crumbles and crunches beneath her feet and she almost trips a few times. Uncle Qrow is getting smaller and smaller into the distance and he doesn't slow down even when she's calling to him. Maybe he can't hear her._

W-Wait! Wait for me!

_Finally, he stops in the middle of the field. Ruby nearly collapses to a halt a few meters behind him. Her hands are on her knees and her pants come in jets of white mist. She stares up at her uncle's tall endless back, his tattered cape fluttering in the icy wind._

…wait for me…please… _she gasps,_ Where are we going, Uncle Qrow?

_He doesn't answer her. Ruby watches her uncle's head tilt up towards the sky, gazing at something only he seems to see. He doesn't turn around. He doesn't say a thing._

_And then he's gone, vanishing in a cloud of black feathers that catch and dissolve in the air._

_Ruby stands frozen. A few of the feathers land at her feet, crumbling into dust. She stares at the spot where he had been._

Uncle Qrow?

_Her eyes dash across the ground, looking for his footprints. The snow is empty and blank. Silence roars in the space all around her as the wind settles. She is alone…_

Ruby opens her eyes. Phantom needles are stabbing into her head. There is a stain of silver in her vision, gleaming and bright.

She blinks and it disappears.

~~~

A boy arrives at the inn one day. She is returning from the ash tree and sees him standing at the downstairs bar, looking terrified and completely out of his element. He has a round face and owlish hazel irises, a backpack strapped around him that he clutches to. He's wearing farmer gloves and she guesses from a distance that they're around the same age, give or take a few years.

They catch each other's eyes.

A pinwheel of emotions spins across his face. Shock and confusion and then something that is strangely akin to sorrow.

Ruby's brow rises. She wracks her brain, wondering if they've met in the past, but can't place his face. He takes a step forward, mouth opening like he wants to speak, but then halts again. Pity stirs in the depths of his young features. There is something ancient and all-knowing in it too.

Unnerved, Ruby quickly heads to the stairs.

He doesn't call out or follow her and eventually, she sees him leave the inn. Mistral reaches out and swallows the boy whole.

Overhead, a single blackbird glides after.

~~~

She hears her dad speaking at midnight. His voice is strained, clearly attempting to be a whisper, though he's never had much success in being discreet when he's riled up.

"…so what, you're just not going to tell me?" he snaps, sounding tired and at wit's end, "Lionheart's freaking the hell out."

"It is not his place," says a curt voice—a woman's.

Her dad laughs bitterly. "And not mine either then."

"Only by your own design. You could never bear to know."

"Damn right I couldn't," he sighs, "Listen, you have to give me something here."

"I have told you, Taiyang, he is not to be trus—"

"He's going to seize everything."

Whatever that means it causes a stark and dead silence. Ruby can almost hear the faint pattering of rain outside, like a small and distant drumbeat. When the woman speaks again, her words are slow, deliberately calm and sound almost to herself.

"There's nothing I can do."

"What are you talking about?" her dad groans, and Ruby can imagine his hand scrunched in his own hair, "Yes, there is. Just tell him what happened to Ozpin. Tell him where he is."

"I cannot."

"Then he'll—"

"So be it," she says, and Ruby flinches at her voice, as cold as a blade against the vein, "They are just…things. Items. Do not be so weak as to have these attachments."

The tension is stifling. Her dad has never sounded as angry and disappointed as when Ruby hears him then.

"How can you say that? All the years, everything we've been through, you call that just an 'attachment' too? How—how can you-doesn't it mean anything? Don't you care at all?"

She can see her dad stomping back and forth through the crack in the doorway. His teeth are clenched, fists quivering with rage and frustration. The woman stands near the window, under shadows. When she shifts however and moves into the light—that is when Ruby knows she is dreaming. The moon gleams against bone-white skin and blood-red (rust red) eyes.

"Of course I care," she says, with a hint of gentleness, a hint of unfathomable loss, "He was my brother. The other half of me. Of course I care. But this has never been about us and he would have understood."

The reasoning must be sensible since her dad does not retort. Ruby turns, walking silently down the hall and back to her room. She is dreaming, she tells herself. It is easier to fight the temptation to hate within a dream.

In the morning, her dad is grayed and dull-eyed, but that is nothing unusual these days and Ruby has managed to convince herself.

~~~

She sees Uncle Qrow in the shadows of afternoon sun, in the light refracted off water glasses.

She sees the angles of his profile and the gray streaks of his hair, the solid arms that could swing her up and had given the best and warmest of hugs. Sometimes he's turned away and sometimes he's looking at her, but she can never see his face.

A desperate ache squeezes in her chest. She wants to run forward and curl tight into his arms again, cry until all the hideous and wrong things in the world disappear. She wants to apologize for failing, wants to beg whatever gods there are and bargain like a child for a second chance (please, I promise I'll listen this time, I promise to stay back, I'll do what I'm told for the rest of my life, just please please please…)

A silver film hovers across the field of her vision, shimmering across her uncle's body. It's always there and Ruby registers somewhat dazedly, that she doesn't know what it is.

It only recedes if she blinks and re-focuses, and not even then sometimes if she's remembering too much and replaying the past over and over again in her head. She remembers Penny then too. And Pyrrha.

She thinks about Tyrian and his vicious smile, how the purple had seeped into his lightless golden eyes. She thinks of Cinder's face—a taunting, burning effigy that vanishes into smoke.

The strange, foreign anger flares up in those moments, as if some ancient wound coming undone, and something inside her head screams.

~~~

It is on a bleached, sun-washed morning that her dad says they've been summoned to Haven. It is not a request or a question and Lionheart is expecting them to be prompt. The corners of Taiyang's eyes are tight and his mouth is a pursed flat line. He looks about as happy as Yang with the news, which is not at all.

"So after weeks of ignoring us he suddenly thinks he can just ring his little bell and we'll all come running?" her sister's lip curls, "What the hell, Dad?"

"Yang, I know," their dad mutters, running a hand down his face, "But we have no choice."

"Uh, yeah, we do! Tell him to screw off!"

From one of the corners of the bed, Nora snorts in glee and shoots her hand into the air. "Yeah! I second that!"

Though she nearly bashes him in the face, Ren calmly lowers her arm back down. "Overruled."

"He probably still hasn't heard what he's looking for," Jaune says over Nora's whines, "Maybe he's finally thinking we might know something worthwhile."

If that's the case, Ruby assumes Lionheart will be incredibly disappointed. He is part of the huge-and-important secret, which her mind can only ever interpret as the-secret-that-took-Uncle-Qrow-away. She can guess what questions he'll try to ask and a ball of dread forms and hardens at the base of her stomach. She doesn't want to go to Haven anymore. She doesn't want to see Lionheart.

But…she supposes it isn't about what she wants. It never has been.

"I'll go."

All heads turn to her—four with concern and the last with regret.

"Sis…" Yang begins but is stopped by a shake of her head.

"I came here to help and that hasn't changed."

Her sister and friends go quiet but Ruby doesn't wait for them to say anything else. She leaves to gather her things and after a minute or two, she hears them all do the same. Her father's gaze lingers on her as he passes her room. The guilt in it nearly scorches her skin.

When they head out the door, her father pulls her back, touches her shoulder.

"Ruby," he says, and his voice crumbles, "I'm sorry."

She stares at him and though her insides twist and clench, she can't puzzle out why.

"It's okay, Dad," she says, squeezing his hand, "Though honestly, I don't think we have much left to offer."

It's meant partially as a joke, but her father doesn't laugh and neither does she.

~~~

Haven Academy is sprawling and grand, all white columns and cobbled terraces and sweet-smelling gardens. As opposed to Beacon's more modernized charms, it holds a classical beauty that is as old and dazzling as the stars. Artwork dots the winding corridors—a King Taijitu, a sobbing woman with wings—oil paintings and sculptures welded from marble and bronze. Weiss would have known all their histories and names. Blake would have had a field day in the maze of a library. They would have both appreciated it far more than Ruby can.

(…she wishes she hadn't seen the way Beacon had burned, because now it's all she can imagine behind Haven's cavernous walls…)

Leo Lionheart is waiting in his office. He is a giant, broad-chested man with a golden-brown beard, contrasted sharply by his small, darting eyes. He beckons them in with an impatient flurry of hand waves and dutiful 'welcomes.'

He offers a handshake to her father, but settles for simply clapping him on the back when it's ignored.

"Ah, the young travelers from Vale," he says as they sit on the plush sofas, "My condolences toward your school and terribly sorry for the long wait. Xiao Long and I had a few urgent matters to straighten out."

He smiles in gestured camaraderie, but Taiyang just glares at him, stony and full of dislike. The tension between them is as taut as an overworked muscle and Yang exchanges a confused glance with Ruby. Ren and Nora fidget in their seats and the weight of silence bears down upon the room, until Jaune speaks.

"I don't think we have the information you're looking for."

"Unfortunately, I don't believe so either," Lionheart says, bridging his hands. He looks directly at Ruby for a long unreadable beat before turning to Taiyang.

Her father's jaw nearly creaks from how hard he's clenching it, but he seems to understand the expectation. Although he's never looked closer to physical violence than then, he sounds only defeated and powerless when he addresses her.

"Ruby, did…did Qrow ever say anything to you about Ozpin? Like what happened to him? Where he could be?"

She stares, lips already beginning to tremble, but she can see Yang's face twist in shocked fury from the corner of her eye and she answers before there is a scene.

"No. He only told us about the Maidens and…and the Relics."

"And later on as well, after he was poisoned?" Lionheart suddenly says, leaning in with glinting cat eyes, "What were his final words?"

Yang and Jaune nearly leap to their feet at the same time, outrage painted stark on their faces, while Ren and Nora gape. It is her father though, who beats them all to actual speech.

"Watch it," he says, tone protective. Dangerous.

Lionheart's attention scuttles to him for barely a moment. "This is important."

"I know and I'm not gonna give a damn at all in just a little bit if you don't—"

"He said he's missing." Ruby tries not to shrink when all the heads and eyes turn to her. "Professor Ozpin. N-Not where he was, but just that he had to take over for him."

They're not the final words. No, those had been nothing grand or world-altering or fateful. Just from an uncle to his niece and holding no significance to anyone but her. Just...

_...Good job, kiddo._

"Interesting," Lionheart says, leaning back in his chair. His thumb presses a button along the armrest. "Thank you, Miss Rose, that was most helpful. As a token of my gratitude, I promise we will treat his effects with all due care and diligence."

Ruby blinks, the statement making no sense to her. Confusion riddles her sister and friends' faces as well. Taiyang bangs his fist against the coffee table, making Nora jump, and he must have slightly lost control of his strength because a deep crack is left in the ebony wood.

"The hell are you still talking about?" he grinds out, "You heard what she just said. This proves he didn't know either."

Lionheart regards him blankly, as if he has said something quite foolish.

"On the contrary, I believe this proves he did."

The office doors slam open. Five men dressed in armor and gear march into the room. Jaune and Yang spin around, bewildered, while Ren and Nora jolt to their feet as well, the former stepping subtly in front of the latter. Only Ruby stays frozen in her seat, staring at her father, who looks simultaneously helpless and homicidal, like he wants to leap at Lionheart and strangle him but is being locked down by unseen chains.

Jaune's hand creeps toward his sword belt. "Uh, guys? Who are they?"

"Dad," Yang hisses, eyes narrowing, "What's going on?"

Before anyone can answer, the man at the far-right steps forward. Ruby suddenly notices that he's holding a single medium-sized box in his arms.

"Headmaster," he says, "We've searched the rooms. All of Qrow Branwen's personal items have been seized."

The words spin and tumble in Ruby's head, but do not process. Two other men walk up next to the first one. They are holding a long, wrapped bundle between them that is quickly untied.

The scythe shines beneath the headlamps, still folded into the shape of a sword. Ruby stares and stares at it, gaze sliding slowly to the box. It is tilted at just the right angle so that the contents are peeking out. She sees then the mouth of a metal flask and the chain of rings.

A cape, red and tattered.

"H-Hey…" Yang murmurs, blood draining from her face, "Is that—"

Ruby is standing. "What are you doing?" she asks, softly.

"Ruby…" her father starts, but Lionheart cuts him off with a cleared throat.

"Miss Rose, allow me to explain. As someone who is aware now of the many hidden monsters in this world, you should have some conception at least of what your uncle had been involved in. It is unfortunate but the things he'd been privy to, all of Ozpin's secrets that he knew, we cannot let them be buried with him."

"That doesn't explain _shit_ ," Yang says, and the sound of bending metal can be heard as she clenches her fists, "If you want to play detective and go look for Professor Ozpin then fine, whatever. Why the _fuck_ do you have Qrow's stuff?"

"There is no need for such vulgarity, Miss Xiao Long," Lionheart chides, as if he's reproaching a bunch of children for staying up late, "Honestly, I would rather avoid all this unpleasantness as well. It's a great drain on time and resources."

Lifting himself to his feet, Lionheart folds his hands behind his back.

"Since the CCT went down," he explains, "Haven has begun employing state-of-the-art Atlesian technology to keep communications in place. One particular instrument we've been using as of late has the ability to trace the original path of an individual via their aura particles. I should mention it is an incredible piece of work that has saved the lives of students and huntsmen several times already."

With a huge, deliberate hand, he gestures at the men, at Uncle Qrow's scythe and the box full of what's left of him.

"It does however, require a great amount of the target's aura to operate, which we can only extract now from his personal effects. Once we've completed the process and have a clear idea of where he's been since Beacon's fall, it will all be returned to you."

"Yeah? And in how many pieces?" Jaune says suddenly and they turn to him. His blue eyes are narrowed in revulsion. "Residual aura isn't easy to find or capture. You'll be slicing and drilling through everything just to collect enough."

Ren and Nora are regarding the Haven headmaster with similar looks of disgust. Yang's eyes are wide, pupils shrunken to dots, while their father glares at the floor, teeth clenched, back stiff and taut. Ruby stares at Lionheart. It is subtle, almost invisible, but the corner of his lid twitches and that is answer enough for her even before he begins to reply.

"Yes, well, some damage is obviously unavoid—"

"You're not taking anything."

Ruby walks in front of Lionheart, staring up into his vaguely surprised and irritated gaze. He is a mountain of a man, and she barely reaches his chest, but Ruby feels no fear inside her. Just a strange and terrible rumbling, as if something has begun to build.

"Miss Rose, you must listen—"

"No," her vision shivers, the air gleaming silver at the corners, "I said you're not taking anything."

"I am very sorry," Lionheart says, but he doesn't sound very sorry or look very sorry and Ruby is sick to death of that sentence anyway.

"Give it back," she whispers, "Those belong to Uncle Qrow."

"I cannot. This is an express order from the Council."

Her eyes flash. Nora and Ren are blotted out by glittering light. Jaune's face, brows knit and bordering on concern, is swallowed a second later. Some detached part of her realizes she should find this more alarming. It wonders if she's going blind.

"I'm not asking. You give it back now."

There is an indistinct hum in the air. Lionheart sighs, as if he's quite tired of entertaining them already.

"Be reasonable. I understand that this is difficult but you must stop being a child. I'm sure your uncle would not have approved of such selfishness."

"Oh, you're definitely asking for it," Yang growls, face pale and livid. She takes a step forward before her father grabs her by the arm.

"Ruby?" he says, though his voice sounds garbled, as if she's hearing it from underwater, "Hey, rosebud, it's okay. Please, you gotta calm down."

And Lionheart, on his last thread of patience, says, "What good are they to him now?

Qrow Branwen is dead."

Ruby sees white.

~~~

_A little girl stands alone in the snow. Black feathers lay at her feet, crumbling into dust._

_"A bad man," she says, and opens her silver eyes, "He is a bad man."_


	3. III

_"Did you know, Ruby, that we are made from the dust?"_

_She peers up at him through messy bangs. Uncle Qrow is tracing the patterns of lace on her pillow, eyes idle and yet far away. Ruby knows in that moment this bedtime story will not be one of the usual boring fairytales, the ones Daddy is always making Uncle Qrow tell her._

_"No way," she says, "You mean like fire dust? Or ice dust?"_

_He chuckles, turning to her. "I mean real dust, kid. The kind that blows up in the scrublands. Or the stuff your dad beats out of the curtains in spring."_

_Her eyes widen. "Oh." Her nose wrinkles a second later. She doesn't much like real dust. It grows into thick yucky layers that make her sneeze._

_"Crazy huh?" Uncle Qrow says, "We're bound in that way. From giants to pipsqueaks. Doesn't matter if you're man or woman, human or faunus. We all came to be in the same way."_

_Ruby thinks and decides that it is indeed pretty crazy, but also very exciting and Uncle Qrow seems to really like the idea, so that means Ruby really likes it too._

_"How'd it happen?" she asks._

_"Well," Uncle Qrow folds an arm behind his head and leans back against the headboard, "At the beginning there were gods. Maybe one. Maybe several. Point is they got to thinking the world was a little too quiet. They thought they could create a few things to fill up all the empty space."_

_"Like what you did with Zwei right?" she grins at his confused look, "For Daddy. To fill up all the empty space."_

_Her smile falters slightly when she sees a shadow of sadness cast over Uncle Qrow's eyes. She had been trying to show that she'd been noticing and observing-a clumsy attempt at impressing him. She hadn't meant to make him sad._

_Luckily, the shadow fades quickly, or at least does an odd but frequent thing where it's sucked down and covered up as Uncle Qrow smiles._

_"Yeah, kid. A little like Zwei. Now stop interrupting would ya?"_

_She mimics zipping and locking her lips, then opening her mouth anyway to eat the key. Uncle Qrow snorts and she beams inside, because that little joke has never failed to make him laugh and she likes that he finds her funny._

_"Anyway, like any new project, you gotta first gather the necessary materials. Remnant however, was a bit sparse at the time and so they had to make due with what was available. That being dust. Great piles of it were collected, scooped up into their giant god hands. They spent days and nights molding and creating. Two eyes here, a nose there, some hair, some fingers."_

_He pokes her as he lists the parts, making her giggle and bat at him._

_"Eventually, Man was made. Breathed into life by gods. At last the world was full. The gods loved Man, even though he wasn't like them. Not perfect or eternal. He made mistakes and had a will of his own. Sometimes his choices were poor and sometimes he didn't learn. Between you and me, kiddo, I think that's why they loved him in the first place."_

_Ruby nods, pretending to understand, even though she can't imagine how someone could be liked for making bad choices. Maybe if they hadn't meant to or felt super bad afterwards and tried really hard to apologize and make up for it._

_"The most important difference though, was that Man wasn't forever. He'd age, grow weak and wither, until one day finally he was gone. It was a balancing act, you see. The world had been filled to the brim. The gods wanted each and every part of humanity to get their time here and so no one could stick around indefinitely."_

_She frowns, large eyes staring up at her uncle._

_"Then…what would happen to Man? Where would he go?"_

_"Back to the beginning, kiddo."_

_It clicks in Ruby's head. "Dust?"_

_Uncle Qrow grins, ruffling her hair a little. "To dust. Until made again into something else."_

_It sounds very sensible, the way he tells it, but Ruby can't help frowning still. "But…what about everyone else? What about the mommy and daddy or grandpa and grandma? What if there's a big sister like Yang? They'd never see him again."_

_"Now, kid, don't get ahead of me here," Uncle Qrow chides, though his tone is teasing, "And besides, who said they wouldn't?"_

_"Huh? What do you mean?"_

_"I mean no one's ever truly gone, rosebud," he says, with strange and serious meaning, "Sure, maybe someone won't be there anymore in the normal way, but…he'd still be around. He'd be a little part of everything. 's just a matter of knowing where to look."_

_The thought plays out in her head—an embrace through the grass, a whisper of laughter amongst the birds. Ruby's lips part in awe, understanding dawning upon her._

_"Like the snow?" she says, "And the trees and rain?"_

_"Exactly."_

_Ruby nods to herself, eyes twinkling. "I like that, Uncle Qrow."_

_He chuckles, "Me too, kiddo."_

_"But why did the gods decide this? Didn't they want everyone to get their turn and no more?"_

_"That was the idea," Uncle Qrow's gaze shifts to the window, where the broken moon shines down through the curtains, "But they probably ended up relating a lot better than they thought they would. I mean, they had created humanity to not feel alone. 's only natural that they made it so no one else was left behind. That in one way or another, we all remained together."_

_Ruby's smile spreads wide and she scoots closer beneath the covers, until she's pressed up to him._

_"You mean like us, right Uncle Qrow? We'll always be together too!"_

_Uncle Qrow smiles. His eyes are very, very soft._

_"Yes, little rose," he wraps an arm around Ruby, tucking the blankets over her shoulders, "Always."_

~~~

Ruby is floating.

Shapeless, incandescent fractals hover around her. There is a coldness rattling in her bones even as molten lava-heat writhes in her chest and skull. Sounds come from far away, as if muffled by tufts of cotton, barely distinct.

Shouts. Gunfire.

She doesn't know where she is.

_Always get a good bearing of your current location,_ Uncle Qrow's lesson drifts to her and Ruby tries, she really does, but her limbs are like lead and her head hurts and for once, she just doesn't feel like caring.

So Ruby floats, staring up at the white, white infinity beyond her. White like snow. Like her mother's cloak and Weiss's hair.

Ruby can't remember what happened. Her memory is ripped and stained, strips of it missing. They had seen Lionheart and she recalls his eyes, pupils narrowed like a cat's. There was talk about Atlesian technology, about tracing old aura. Her father had broken the coffee table.

She remembers a box and in that box had been a tattered red cape.

Then nothing but flashes. Jaune's sword and Yang screaming. Ren and Nora standing close together and her father's wide, almost frightened eyes. There were men with raised guns and they must have been aimed at her, because she recalls staring into their black, bottomless muzzles. They'd fired at her, she thinks, all perfectly in sync.

Ruby wonders suddenly if she's dead.

_"Bad man."_

Fissures materialize in the air, spilling out light that spreads apart like wings.

_"He wants to hurt Yang and Jaune and Nora and Ren. He wants to hurt Daddy."_

The voice is small and choked, but beneath a hint of steel lurks. A hint of ruthlessness and power.

_"He is a bad man."_

Ruby's eyes widen. She looks around but sees only whiteness. Dusty black feathers fall around her, down and down from some unreachable point above.

_"I won't let him,"_ the voice whispers, and it sounds like a child sobbing, _"He won't take Uncle Qrow away."_

Her head burns, a searing, vicious pain. She sees the light grow brighter and brighter.

And then there is nothing.

~~~

The first time Ruby wakes it is to her dad clutching her. His hands are trembling and his skin is frigid. His face blurs in and out of focus, but she can see the whites of his eyes. She's being held so tightly that it feels like her bones will fracture.

He says something. She doesn't know what. Yang and Jaune come into view and there is suddenly too much blonde everywhere that Ruby closes her eyes, sinking back into the calming darkness.

When she next regains her senses, it is nighttime and her head is throbbing. She is back in her bed at the inn and the wind whistles, caressing her face, as the creaking trees rustle their leaves outside. Ruby squints at the ceiling, nothing processing for a beat before it comes crashing back. With a gasp, she flies up, blankets pooling in her lap as she pats her face. To her relief, no silver hovers at the edge of her vision. No wings or white light.

"Finally coherent again?"

A shadow casts over her and Ruby's brain stutters to a halt.

The woman's blood-red (rust red) eyes stare into hers, the same shade as the armor garbing her shoulders and torso. She tilts her head, wild black hair swaying with the breeze.

"Do you know who I am?" she asks.

Ruby nods mutely, because how can she not? The great and unspoken shadow in their lives—who'd haunted Yang like a bad dream, who'd emptied her father of everything he was and left a shell behind. She knows too much about her and yet nothing at all. Not even her name.

The woman's eyes flicker.

"Raven," she says, "My name that is."

She moves something under her arm, a mask carved into the Grimms' rictus smile. There is a stiffness in her gaze, a barely concealed discomfort. Ruby is a stranger to her as much as she is to Ruby.

"We don't have to talk," Raven says, "And you won't ever have to see me again after tonight. I just…I wanted to tell you I'm bringing him home."

Ruby stares at her, but instead of waiting for a reply, Raven moves her other arm—one that she'd been cradling close to her chest. A small metal jar is held out beneath the moonlight. Ruby's blood freezes solid in her veins.

"Where did you…" she rasps, "Where…"

"Your father," Raven says shortly, "After your little display today, I'm rather disinclined to simply make off with Brother's possessions."

She glances at the jar. "Or Brother for that matter."

It is a combination of awkwardness and stress, and not meant as a joke. Ruby can see it in her eyes, the sting of terrible pain. And regret.

"Why did you leave him?" Leave Dad. Leave _Yang_. (It's not her place to ask for them, because one day Raven will have to answer and Ruby doesn't want to rob them of that).

Raven is silent.

"He's the one who left," she says eventually and does not try to meet her eyes, walking to the window at an almost brisk pace.

The armor appears cumbersome, but she steps onto the ledge as if flowing through water. And it seems like she'll slip away then and vanish, as she had done once before that mythical night long ago. Ruby's pulse quickens and suddenly worried, she calls out.

"You'll take care of him right?"

She does not think of the jar as Uncle Qrow. _(Ashes are not tall and strong, or wear a grin that is always hiding secrets. Ashes do not play video games, drink too much and get overly mad at the busted toaster in the morning. They do not tuck her in and tell her stories about gods)._

The jar is not Uncle Qrow. Can't be.

But it is the only part of him left.

Raven turns back around, her feathery hair fanning out like wings. She looks at Ruby, really looks at her.

"I'm bringing him home. _His_ home." For a second, her eyes almost soften. "And when you return, he'll be waiting for you."

There is a dry crack, like a bone snapping, and then Raven and the jar are gone. Ruby watches a blackbird fly towards the moon.

~~~

It only occurs to her later at dawn, when her sister and friends flood around her bed that she doesn't know what happened.

The news is buzzing across the kingdom, on how the spiraling rooftop of Haven's tallest tower suddenly tore open like an erupting geyser. Ruby remembers the gold-plated rafters, the domed ceiling that stretched so far above her head. She can't imagine any of the things they're saying she has done.

"I don't know how the heck you got your Semblance to do that, but Lionheart's not pressing charges either," Yang says, grinning, "You should've seen his face, Rubes. It looked like he was gonna piss himself!"

Nora snickers at the memory and Ren sighs, shaking his head. Jaune gives her a smile, even if there is something akin to concern lingering in his eyes.

"Did I hurt anyone?" Ruby asks him softly.

"No," he says, "and the Council's reversed the seizure instruction."

When Ruby just blinks at him, he reaches for something behind his back, letting it unfurl on the sheets and then she understands.

"Oh," says Ruby, voice cracking, and takes the tattered red cape, gathering it in her arms. It's fainter now, but the scent is still there. Whiskey, blood and forest skies.

Yang wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezes. "We got his flask and scythe back too. It's okay now, sis."

It's not of course, and it won't be for a long time (if ever), but for this moment Ruby smiles, hugs the cape close and lets relief take her.

~~~

At the doorway, Taiyang is pale and silent, eyes full of fear and storms. Ruby's eyes are still glowing slightly, barely noticeable in the brightening day, but it reminds Taiyang of Summer after she had just torn a chunk out of a mountainside and makes the hair rise on his nape. He has a feeling Ruby knows it is not a Semblance and that there will be a great many questions coming his way.

Taiyang curses Qrow in his head, for lying but also telling the truth and then leaving him in this mess alone.

He curses Raven as well and has to offer some half-assed explanation about Qrow's ashes being stored away when Yang asks why the jar has disappeared. Ruby stares at him, not saying a word and he suspects it is out of consideration for her sister more than anything else. 

Taiyang knows Raven, had known her almost painfully well once upon a time, and he could guess that she had gone to see Ruby, moved by whatever dregs of sentiment she had left. It had always been her way. Feeling too little and too late.

A muscle in his jaw twinges.

The night will float in his dreams for a while yet, how the Branwen twins—his wife, his brother, his friends, his _team_ —took flight together one final time. It was in that moment as well, that Taiyang couldn't help thinking how alike they truly were-both jagged at the edges, pain-hardened and untamable in their own respects.

Cryptic and stubborn and loyal to an absolute burning fault.

And in the end, they'd each left one of Taiyang's little girls behind.


	4. IV

IV.

~~~

_There is a Grimm at the edge of Mistral._

_It has been to Kuroyuri's ruined streets, followed the scent of blood and poison and sour-smelling death._

_Raising a gnarled hand, the Grimm touches the ash tree and watches it wither into a husk. Its burning eyes pool with fire as the past weaves before its mind._

_A girl, it sees. With a tattered, red cape. She has the same pale-sallow face of humans it's seen before in wreckage and flames. The sweet ones who'd smelled of pain and fear._

_The Grimm raises its head, tar breath seeping through its teeth like smoke._

_The girl had failed to save something. Something very, very important. She must have pickled in her grief for so long….all the flavor still fresh…_

_It whines, writhing in bottomless hunger. This girl. It wants this girl._

_On cracked and black-stained feet, the Grimm creeps down the hill._

~~~

Eventually, Ren drags Yang and Nora away, stressing that Ruby needs to rest and luring them with the promise of pancakes. Ruby isn't sure how he plans to convince the inn's chef to let him borrow the kitchen, but Nora has no such concerns. She bounces out, practically swinging from Ren's arm, while Yang stands to follow.

"We'll talk later?" she asks, gently, with more seriousness as she regards her little sister—pale and small in the bed and clutching their uncle's cape.

Ruby looks down at her lap. She remembers Yang's white-faced fury back in Lionheart's office, the shock, disgust and grief spinning through her expression. He was mine too, her sister's words echo to her, He was mine too, Ruby.

Her chest clenches and her shoulders fall. "Okay."

Yang blinks in surprise, a hopeful smile peeking on her lips. She leans forward and hugs her once, the touch of her flesh arm warm and soft, and then slips from the room. Jaune lags behind, standing for a moment at her bedside.

"You sure you're feeling alright?" he asks. Ruby musters a weak, watery smile.

"Yeah, just a bit dizzy. I'll be okay."

Jaune nods, relieved. "It was terrible," he says, a shuddering breath of honesty, "What he tried to do. He doesn't deserve to be a headmaster."

She doesn't know how to reply to that and he must realize it a second later because he sighs, running a hand through his golden hair. There's a tension trapped inside him, captured in the rigid hold of his shoulders and his eyes' anxious gleam. She has come to know him though and eventually he finds a way to release it into words.

"Ruby," he says, careful, voice tinged with almost-fear, "that thing you did…it wasn't your Semblance, was it?"

"…."

"Ruby?"

"Where did my dad go?"

She is glancing past his shoulder and Jaune turns, finding only an empty threshold staring back.

~~~

Taiyang loiters at the edge of Mistral, spinning a beer bottle around and around between his fingers. The last few buildings within the kingdom are humbler and more akin to huts, while foothills beyond are rolling and green, interspersed occasionally by yellowed clumps of parched grass. It looks so damn plain and harmless, even though history has bathed this place in the blood of countless wars.

The Grimm are odd here, mangled somehow and stronger than usual. He's lost count of how many missions STRQ had had to clear them out of these lands, where they festered up like pus from a wound. He doubts anything has changed since then.

Monsters stay the same, even when nothing else does. Taiyang sighs and takes another swig.

He should be heading back to the inn, facing his daughter and giving her the answers she deserves. Instead, he hides, replaying Lionheart's words in his head even as he tries to drown them out in alcohol's tide.

_"Your little girl has silver eyes," he'd said, as soon as Taiyang returned. They sat in the courtyard, where he could see the gaping hole in Mistral's tower, barely veiled by flapping tarps._

_"Yeah, what's it to you?"_

_Lionheart huffed of breath through his nose. "Everything, foolish boy. Why did you hide it from me?"_

_"Because it's none of your business. And you could've known just by looking at her."_

_"Yes, but I couldn't have thought she'd have access to the power at her age."_

_"She doesn't, damn it, you're the one who drew it out."_

_Lionheart scoffed, small feline eyes turning to him. "Don't be absurd. I only acted as I saw best. Nothing more."_

_His voice grew harder, colder. "It matters little now anyway. Miss Rose prevailed. If word got out that a child had been behind that scene and the reason why, well, the public has always been leashed by their ridiculously soft hearts. The Council has a better sense of preservation than that."_

_Fists leeching of blood, Taiyang gritted his teeth. "You call having a bit of human decency ridiculous? She's just lost her school, her friends. Her uncle practically died in her arms and Qrow was…after Summer was gone a-and I…he was all she had for a time. He meant the world to her."_

_Lionheart's eyes flickered, perhaps softening. "We would have returned everything."_

_"No, you wouldn't have," Taiyang hissed, "Not in the way that matters and you know it."_

_There was another silence. Lionheart looked away._

_"Well, as I said previously, it isn't of consequence anymore. I hope you're happy. Everything Qrow Branwen knew is lost to the grave," he wiped his brow with a pocket handkerchief, "How can you come to my school, claiming you want to help, when all you've done is set us back?"_

_Taiyang's gaze hardened, like frosted lava rock. "Oz wouldn't have let it slide anyway if he knew what you'd tried to do."_

_"You'd be surprised by the things Ozpin would 'let slide,'" Lionheart sighed, shoulders slumping, and suddenly seemed tired, "And better for it. The world is too cruel for innocence and sentiment."_

_He stood before Taiyang could snap a retort, hands folding behind his back. "Look, boy," he said, staring down at him, "I understand he was important to you and your daughters. You may not believe me, but I do. And we can stay here all day, debating what's right and what's not, but the fact of the matter is this—Qrow made his choice, just as Miss Rose will now need to make hers."_

_"I won't let you involve my daughter," Taiyang whispered, even when he knew it was in vain. Lionheart's eyes said it all._

_"We're all involved already," a moment's flash went across his face, a glimpse of something drawn and haunted, "_ She _is out there. And no one can escape her. Not you, me or anyone else."_

_He pinned him down with his gaze and a chill skittered down Taiyang's spine. The words weren't all they appeared to be, but he didn't know why. Wasn't sure he wanted to._

_"I need to know, Taiyang. I need to know what happened to Ozpin."_

He scoffs at the memory, taking another long drink. Oz had approached him in the past just once and Taiyang had refused. Deep down, he supposed he'd been afraid of that kind of knowledge, of how it would darken the world in his eyes. He was not brave like Summer, or loyal like Qrow and he had watched as those secrets took them, sending them further and further away, until they were both devoured.

Taiyang pinches the bridge of his nose and swears, the sound painfully loud in the deserted streets. Painfully something anyway.

"So you really are here."

He jolts, staggering on his unsteady feet. He would've fallen on his ass if not for the pair of arms that materialize beneath his back. Taiyang's head spins and in the moment of bleary incoherence where the world bleeds, he sees pale skin and high cheekbones and thinks _Raven_.

But then his eyes clear and a flood of gold spills into his vision. One of the arms beneath him, he realizes, is hard and hollow.

"Yang?" he croaks.

His first daughter gives him a pointed look, heaving him back to his feet while snatching the bottle from his hand. "Hey, dad."

Taiyang stares dumbly at her and though he really wants to say _What are you doing here, don't look at me like this, don't look,_ what ends up coming out is, "I thought you were eating pancakes."

Yang rolls her eyes. "That was hours ago. It's one in the afternoon now."

He blinks blearily, not having realized how much time has passed. Yang stares at the bottle, regarding the label, and then tips it back before he can stop her. She takes a single giant gulp, before chucking it into a dumpster. The sound of shattering glass drags in his ears.

"You shouldn't be drinking," he mumbles, pointlessly, as she wipes her chin.

"That's rich, pops. You trying to replace Uncle Qrow already?" Her voice goes weak for a moment at the end and Taiyang swallows, leaning against one of the mud brick walls to retain his balance.

"How did you find me?" he asks, instead of addressing what she hadn't even meant to say. She follows along quickly, crossing her arms.

"Wasn't hard. I just thought of the furthest possible place a person could get from the inn without leaving Mistral entirely and started first with the pubs."

Taiyang snorts bitterly. "Your old man that predictable, huh?"

"I just know you, dad. Almost as well as I know my sister."

Silence. Taiyang scuffs the dusty cobblestone with his shoe.

"What's that suppose to mean?"

Yang groans, planting her hands on her hips. Her eyes narrow, tone steeped with annoyance.

"What do you think? I'm not an idiot, dad. That…that _thing_ Ruby did back at Haven...with her eyes—it wasn't her Semblance."

Immediately, the father in him wants to lie, wants to draw up shields and protection and comfort. It's in the tugging of his bones and the age-old instinct has his denial already teetering along the edge of his tongue.

Yet one deathly look from his daughter makes him pause.

"I don't know what you want me to say, Yang."

Her eyes widen at him, incredulous. "Gee, I'm not sure, how about the truth? You told me all this other stuff about these magical Maidens and relics hidden under the schools, but you suddenly clam up when it has to do with Ruby? _Dad!_ There were wings coming out of my little sister's eyeballs! What the hell's—"

"They're not wings," he cuts her off loudly and fumbles for words after she quiets, "I mean, they are. But not real ones. They're made from light."

He drags a hand down his face when she only stares at him. "Yang," he says, "Are you sure you want to know?"

Without even a second of hesitation, she nods. Her eyes burn and brim with conviction. There isn't a trace of fear in them and Taiyang realizes suddenly, bewilderingly, that he isn't looking at his little girl anymore ( _his child, his sunny little dragon_ ).

Taiyang sees a woman, gleaming like a blade—made from flame and steel, and forged out of pain.

_She's really too much like you, Raven,_ Taiyang thinks, with some awe, with some regret.

And then he knows he must tell her.

~~~

Ruby is tying on her cloak when Jaune comes in with pancakes.

"Hey, Ren made extra batches so—whoa, what're you doing?!" he rushes forward, nearly tossing the plate on the table, only to have his concerned hands swatted away.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she reassures, "Sorry, I was going to give you a heads up downstairs. I need to go out for a bit."

"What? Where?" Jaune shakes his head, trying to sit her back down, "No, no, never mind, you gotta stay here. If your dad comes back and learns I let you leave on your own—"

"He won't be back until tonight," Ruby says, brushing off his hold again, "He's my dad, and that means he's going to avoid me for the rest of the day."

Jaune blinks, but in his moment of pause, she has already strapped Crescent Rose to her back and laced up her boots. When she nudges past him to reach the door, he grabs her arm.

"Wait, I'll come with you."

"Jaune, you don't—"

"Just give me one sec, my sword's in the other room," he says, and then scrambles out and returns before she can even finish registering his words. Fiddling with the clasp of his belt, Jaune quickly slides his weapon into place and straightens. "Alright, where are we going?"

She's about to assure him again that she doesn't need an escort, but he sends her a determined, faintly worried look. It both annoys and resigns her.

"Haven."

A beat.

"Uh, what? Ruby, I think the timing might be a problem on that one."

"I don't actually need to go on school grounds. Anywhere close with a good view of the buildings works."

"...Oh…okay then…"

The unspoken question practically breathes in her ear and Ruby sighs. "I just want to see it, Jaune. The news doesn't ever show any footage and the descriptions aren't that clear either. I…need to see what it looks like. What I did, that's all."

Jaune places a hand on his shoulder. "Alright, I hear you. We'll go together. Haven's north of the central square right? You got a place in mind?"

She pauses for a moment, before nodding. "The hospital's roof is diagonal to it."

The concern in his eyes intensifies. "Ruby—"

"I'll be fine," she stresses, growing tired of how much she has to repeat the sentence, "Please, Jaune. Let's just go."

Without waiting for a reply, she heads out the door and is almost at the top of stairs before she hears him shuffling reluctantly after her.

~~~

"You know, I don't think we were suppose to climb up the side of the building," Jaune is babbling a few minutes later, as they lean over the hospital's precarious, fence-less cement ledge, "Way too unsafe. And probably illegal. Don't you think we should've checked in with reception at least?"

Ruby's stomach twists slightly. No inch of her has any desire to walk those sanitized corridors again, to see the same nurses and doctors with their sad, pitying smiles and the receptionist who had cleaned her uncle's blood from her hands. Who had rubbed her shoulders and told her, "Don't look, sweetheart, it's best not to look."

_(She had though. She had stared at his prone form and his pale-gray eyelids that were tinted with blue. She had waited for them to pull back, for his chest to move, for something to happen. Anything-anything-anything-anything. She had waited and waited and waited…)_

Ruby shakes her head once, shattering the thoughts.

"Relax, I'm not planning to stay for long," she says, before forcing her attention across the cityscape—where Haven's ivory and gold towers reach toward the sky, dome-roofed and stain-glassed. Yet even from where she stands, Ruby can see the giant hole over the top, caved open like a dropped egg. A faint pang of horror echoes through her.

"Are you sure I didn't hurt anyone?"

Jaune touches her hand. "I promise, Ruby, everyone was fine. It…whatever happened didn't last very long. You blasted through the ceiling, the guards fired and then you just kind of fell over." A tremble ghosted through his voice. "We thought they shot you."

She squeezes his hand, offering what meager comfort she can provide.

"What did I do?"

"Well, the air got really cold and there were these lights coming out of your eyes—like…like wings."

Ruby's heart is beating against her ribs. Wind cuts across the naked surface of their skin. Jaune turns to her, sun-bathed hair ruffling over his pale forehead.

"What _was_ that, Ruby?"

"I don't know," she whispers, "I don't remember any of it."

Her last recollection is of those men, holding the scythe and the box, and Lionheart telling her in so many words, that she was never getting them back. She hadn't tried to make sense then, hadn't reasoned, hadn't thought.

In that moment, faced with losing whatever pieces of her Uncle Qrow left, Ruby had only felt.

"…Do you think I was wrong?"

At Jaune's surprised glance, she sighs, turning fully to him. "They were trying to find Professor Ozpin. That's why they needed his things."

Professor Ozpin is important, she knows. More important than her or Jaune. More than Pyrrha was or Penny or Uncle Qrow.

Ruby bites her lip, brows falling. "I came here because I wanted to help. I wanted to make a difference. But when he asked me to hand it all over, I…I couldn't. Was that selfish of me?"

Jaune looks directly into her eyes. "No, you didn't owe him a thing."

"But—"

"Ruby, don't," he takes a breath and releases her hand to grip her shoulders, "Lionheart was out of line. You had every right to say 'no.'"

She is quiet for a beat, gaze drifting to the ground between their feet.

"…Would he have understood?"

Jaune's hands tighten. "I think you know the answer to that," his lips quirk in a faint smile, "Besides, I doubt he'd be all torn up that his stuff's not getting taken away."

Ruby smiles weakly. She can imagine Uncle Qrow huddling over his flask protectively, like a dog guarding his bone. It's so ridiculous and accurate and makes her throat burn.

"Why couldn't I save him?"

She feels Jaune stiffen and hesitate—a shadow of worried confusion drifting across his features. Ruby steps out of his grasp, clenching the folds of her skirt.

"I couldn't save him, Jaune," she croaks, "I-I tried so, so hard and it still hadn't mattered. Why couldn't I save him?"

Jaune's face crumples helplessly. He reaches out for her. "Ruby…"

She shoves his touch away, backing up until she feels the roof ledge touch her thighs. Something inside her feels as if it's shattering. Her shoulders tremble violently and she has to grip her elbows with her hands, for fear that her entire frame is about to shake apart at the seams.

"Why wasn't it enough?" she asks, voice cracking, "I fought and I hoped a-and I had faith and tried to believe and this is what I get? Why, Jaune? Out of all the terrible, miserable people in the world, why am I the one who keeps losing everythin—"

The word vanishes on her tongue, never completed. Long arms wrap around her narrow shoulders, pressing her close and tight. Jaune's body is a solid weight, a warm tangible one, and the hair brushing against her cheek smells of the sunlight.

Ruby is deathly still. Some distant corner of her registers that a boy has never held her in such a way before.

"I don't know," Jaune says softly, "I don't know. I wish I did, I'm sorry."

She begins to wilt, but the grip on her grows stronger, a clear and insistent force.

"But I _can_ tell you this," he says, "It wasn't your fault. None of it was. Not your team or Penny or…or Pyrrha or this. Don't hold onto that kind of guilt, Ruby. It's too damn heavy and it'll only crush you. Trust me."

She swallows, remembering the strange heaviness that laid over her heart, how the pain drove down into her bones and how she forgot how to breathe. Almost of its own accord, her hand reaches up, gripping tight her friend's sleeve.

"Uncle Qrow told me to stay back," she says, hushed, "He didn't want me in the fight and I didn't listen. He had to save me again and t-then h-he—T-Tyrian—"

She breaks off a second time, but Jaune's hold is steady over her.

"It's okay, Ruby," he says, "It's okay to say it. To let it be real."

Her throat is closing up. Something hot and wet is creeping towards the corners of her eyes, clawing to the surface of her mind like a drowning swimmer would.

"He took my uncle away," she whispers into his shoulder, "My uncle, who raised me and trained me and told me stories, who loved me. He took him away, Jaune. H-He—He kil—"

_BOOM_

As if physically burnt by the sound, Ruby rips away from Jaune, nearly tripping over herself, while he is too surprised to protest. Their heads whip as one towards the distance, where a curl of black smoke slithers up into the sky from the far west, at the edge of Mistral that tapers off into the hills.

They blink at each other.

"Wha…?"

Jaune's scroll starts screeching. Ren and Nora's static-garbled voices come in as soon as the call connects.

"Jaune," Ren says, sounding oddly out of breath, "Jaune, where are you?"

"At the hospital," he says, exchanging baffled looks with Ruby, "Why? Is something wrong? What was that explosion?"

Instead of answering, Ren mumbles something to Nora before asking, "Is Ruby with you?"

"I'm here, Ren," she says, stepping up, "Can you tell us what happened? Are you guys okay?"

"Yes, we're fine, but there seems to be—"

Static roars over his voice, the words lost to them until it managed to clear enough for Nora to exclaim at the end, "GRIMM ATTACK IN MISTRAL!"

Ren says something incoherent but reproachful-sounding at her, though Ruby barely even hears it. She stares at the trail of dark smoke, following it down to a point hidden by the mess of buildings.

"…from the far west near the border wall," Ren is telling Jaune, "We're headed there now."

"Where's Yang?" Ruby asks suddenly, her stomach turning on its side, "And my dad? Did he ever come back to the inn?"

Jaune glances at her, face taut with alarm. She senses Ren's hesitation even through the cloud of static.

"No. Yang left the inn hours ago and we haven't seen your father at all."

Ruby is gone before the sentence is even complete, leaving Jaune to blink in her wake.

Her boots pad across the rooftops as she races towards the west. A flurry of rose petals shake loose from her cape as she moves, scattering into the wind behind her.

_Not again,_ she thinks, with every pull of breath, every step she takes, _Not again, not again, not again…_


	5. V.

V.

~~~

The sight of Grimm in Mistral is beyond jarring. 

Clusters of huts have been destroyed, half-caved in as if toys stepped on by a careless child. People are screaming and running—a scattered river of dirty bodies flooding towards the golden kingdom gates. The mud-brick wall lies in a pile of rubble, as writhing shadows emerge from the dusty clouds—beowolves and ursai that are older and bigger than Yang has ever seen before, with snarling, twisted maws bursting with too many canine teeth. 

She scrabbles to her feet, yanking her father’s arm until he stumbles upright as well. He coughs hard, wheezing slightly and a stolen glance at him shows that while unscathed, the pale yellow of his hair is streaked with color and his front is caked in the red of clay and mud. Yang can feel the crusty layer over her own skin and scalp and figures her appearance is much the same.

“You okay?” she asks, nearly yelling over the din of screams, “Dad, are you—“

His other hand lands on hers, squeezing. “Fine, I’m fine. You?”

He’s already attempting to scrape the bangs from her face, the glassy blue in his eyes searching for injury. Yang shakes him off, pushing his hand back to his own chest as gently as a metal arm can. “Same, don’t worry. We’ve got bigger problems.” She looks to the wrecked village, Ember Celica thrumming over her forearms. “I didn’t even think Grimm could get into the kingdoms.” 

Taiyang squints at the monsters like they’re the small print on a fast-food menu. “They can’t. But Mistral’s outskirts do get hit occasionally. Grimm population’s huge around here.” 

“’s not the only thing,” Yang mutters, wincing as an alpha beowolf scavenges through the wreckage. Jagged glass sticks out of its bloodied hind paws and extra dew claws the size of golf balls hang off like malignant growths, “Goddamn, was this place built over toxic waste?”

Her father chuckles briefly, the sound so hollow it almost echoes. “Close enough to it. Theory goes that all of Anima’s Grimm basically mutated from the corruption in Mistral.” 

Yang turns to him, surprise stark on her face as dog-eared textbooks flipped by in her head, perfect in detail, a disturbing testament to Weiss’s potential as a drill sergeant. “I don’t remember hearing about that in class.” 

“You wouldn’t have,” he sighs, “It’s too controversial and the rest of the world needs something to set itself up to. A shiny city of gold. No one wants to see the scuffs or cracks. Even if they’re leaking teeth and Grimm.”

Yang’s mouth tightens. The defeat in his tone curdles her blood, but not nearly as much as the sense it makes. More than anyone, she can understand the temptation to pretend. The ground quakes as Grimm crash through the remaining huts barring their way. 

“Come on, old man,” she says, rotating her shoulder, “Hope you still remember how to do this.”

Taiyang raises an offended eyebrow. “Thanks for the concern, Blondie, but you just worry about yourself. I’ll be fine.”

With a semblance of cheek, she grins and sticks out her tongue. Her father rolls his eyes, brushing past her. He cracks his knuckles and stares out into the writhing masses of death and darkness.

“Seriously though, you’ll be okay?”

Yang almost snorts, readjusting her gauntlets, making sure the prosthetic can still fit the straps properly. It’s an odd feeling, but for the first time in a long time, it feels proper and right. She slams her fists together with a smirk.

“I’ll manage somehow.”

Taiyang shakes his head, “Just remember to keep your cool,” a smile turns on his lips, faint and sad, “Qrow always did call you his little firecracker.” 

Unbidden, a flash of her uncle’s face blinks across her mind—wolfish grin and mouth dancing with secrets. Yang’s smile falls away, a lump forming fast and hard in her throat. It’s only been weeks, but time has already eroded him, memory and shadows eating away at his edges. As a child, she use to find him beautiful, in the way that storms or fire was beautiful. Then when she was older and had learned the truth of things, sometimes she had hated looking at him—all the paleness, dark hair and red eyes—fragments of a mother she’d never known.

It had been wrong of her. She knew that. He’d been brusque and embittered, full of exhaustion and flaw, but at least he had tried and at least he had cared enough to stay. She had no memories of Raven holding her hand or hugging her or carrying her and Ruby out of the dark and endless woods. 

_She should have told him…she should have…when she still had the chance…_

Yang breathes, forcing away the heat trying to grow behind her eyes. The fresh, gaping hole in her aches and sears, as if to alert her again to its presence. As if the holes in her are still countable and she hasn’t had to grow and live around them all her life. 

It isn’t fair, she quietly realizes. It isn’t fair and it isn’t good and the helplessness of this revelation kindles a sudden fury that pierces through Yang, lodging in her heart like a hot knife. 

Her lips pale, fingers twitching and her father’s gaze peels her back layer by layer. 

“I know you want to be strong for your sister,” he says, “But you can’t help her if you’re hurting and angry yourself.” 

“I’m not angry,” Yang snaps and wrenches away from him, hands curling into fists.

Taiyang doesn’t reply. And perhaps it is better for them both in the long run, when the Grimm finally spot them. 

The beowolves howl, saliva stringing down their twisted maws, and Yang does not need to channel her rage to feel every fiber within her go aflame. Their yellow and blood eyes glint at her, devoid of all but raw hunger. They don’t know or care for who they’ve killed or spared, or even the black abysses from whence they came. 

There’s nothing there. Nothing to take revenge on. Nothing to make regret. It is a wasted effort to hate things as mindless as the Grimm.

But by the gods, Yang is going to try. 

~~~

The hospital is approximately twenty minutes from the closest inner gate. At top speed, Ruby makes it there in barely four, but her heart still thunders that it’s too long and too slow. She’s tried calling both her sister and father at least four times each without success. As they’re both forgetful with their scrolls at the best of times, she can’t decide whether to start panicking or not. 

The huge crowds of people that come into view have no such confliction. Amassed at the entryway, they are separated only by the lowered metal gate, which cuts into the middle like a meat cleaver. There is a swell of noise and hysteria in the air and Ruby’s landing goes unnoticed by all save the dust at her feet. 

She squints, trying to make out the gate a few feet ahead, where the elaborate and gleaming robes of the central inhabitants shine in a shallow sea of color. They hide nervous whispers behind silken sleeves, staring towards the opposite side, where the outer villagers scrabble at the portcullis and beg for entry, their browned rags hanging off their frames.

Many of them are stained copper with dust, bruised or scratched up. They carry meager bundles and she can hear somewhere, in the gaggle of fear and frenzy, a baby crying. 

There are only two guards present and they’re positioned a distance from the gate, expressions flat with boredom and guns fixed in their hands. Just standing there. Staring.

Ruby’s eyes widen. Almost without realizing it, she takes a step forward.

“Ruby!”

Ren and Nora are running at her, panting and sweating with their weapons already drawn. They come to a halt in front of her. Or at least Nora does, while Ren stops a few steps away, clutching his knees.

“Whoa, how did you beat us here?” Nora asks, blinking as Ren wheezes behind her, “Where’s Jaune?”

“I ran ahead,” Ruby gestures impatiently at the gates, “What’s happening? Why aren’t they letting those people in?”

They give her puzzled looks before peering over her shoulder. Ruby doesn’t like the way their brows fall knowingly or the worried pursing of their mouths. 

“They’re afraid,” Ren murmurs after a beat, “Opening the gate means Grimm will have a chance to get in.”

He says the words like they should explain everything. Like it should suddenly render the scene before her comprehensible. Ruby blinks at him, incredulous. 

“That’s not good enough,” she snaps and hurries past Nora, who tries and fails to catch her elbow.

“Ruby, wait!”

She does not. Weaving and threading through the crowd, she marches up to the gate, glaring up at the guards, both of whom stare down at her blankly. Although it’s slightly obscured by their helmets, they each sport a giant scar, one across his left cheekbone and the other straight down and through a whitened eye. 

“Step back, girly,” the latter orders, “Beasts are just on the other side. It’s dangerous.”

“Then why aren’t you letting them in?” she demands, pointing at the many bodies near-plastered to the grate. The guards snort.

“And risk Grimm in Mistral? Don’t make me laugh.”

“But you’re trapping these people out too!”

“Look, we’re just paid to take orders and we were ordered to keep ‘em out,” the other guard says with a shrug, “There’s always a few huntsmen hanging around at the pubs over there anyway. If not, Haven’ll send someone eventually.”

“How long is “eventually” going to be?”

She receives another shrug. “Depends on Lionheart’s mood. These suckers will probably be in for a wait though. What with all the crazy shit happening at the school lately.”

“Better for it,” the one-eyed guard agrees, “Kingdom’s already dirty enough. Don’t need to bring in more trash.” 

They trade grins, as if it’s a particularly clever joke. Ruby stares at them, almost blank with shock, when Ren and Nora finally struggle their way to the front.

“Ruby!” 

“Ruby, please—“

“What is wrong with you?” she says, eyes narrowed, “Those are people. Human beings. How can you say that?”

The men snap their heads down at her, like they’re surprised she’s still standing there. “The fuck you suddenly preaching for?” the one with the cheek scar sneers, “Get lost, brat, before we stop being so nice about it.” 

Ruby glares back. She doesn’t go anywhere. 

“You’re suppose to be helping them. It’s your duty.”

They bark out a laugh. “Sounds like we’ve got ourselves an aspiring huntress.” The one-eyed one takes a step closer, mockery glinting in his working eye, visible even behind the glass of his vizor. 

“Listen up, girly, I don’t know what type of fairytale bullshit they teach you in those schools, but this is reality. The only duty we’ve got is to the man who pays. You think you’re gonna be a hero? Don’t fucking kid yourself. Huntsmen end up just two ways. Either they get a clue and start rolling in the mud with the rest of us, or they try and they try until it breaks them apart.”

Ruby’s hands ball into fists. Somewhere in the back of her head, a hum begins. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong?” The man stares at her, considering for a moment, before a cruel smile stretches across his mouth, “No, you just want me to be wrong. Who was it, huh? Your old man a huntsman? Your mommy?”

Her eyes widen. The hum grows louder and soft wisps drift at the corners of her vision, half the world fraying into silver. 

It lasts for the tenth of a second before Ren and Nora draw up to either side of her, the latter resting a hand on her shoulder. 

“Come on, we should go.” 

At the touch, all things snap back into focus—the sky, the ground, the desperate swarms trapped behind an iron gate. Ruby blinks and the hum silences, leaving a dull throb of pain and dizziness in its place. She wobbles and Nora gasps in surprise before a larger hand shoots out to steady them.

“This way,” Ren says, though his eyes are on the two guards, growing colder by the second with disgust, “Not another breath is worth wasting here.”

He’s already hustling them back into the throng of people before the men can react. Ruby is tugged along numbly, wincing as her brain pounds against her burning skull. Ren leads them to a shaded spot behind a nearby herbal store and Ruby has never been more thankful for the soothing coolness of shadows.

She sighs, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples in a weak attempt to alleviate pain. _What was wrong with her?_

“Are you okay?” Nora asks, leaning in, large worried eyes peering into her white face. Ruby tries to smile at her.

“Yeah, I’m okay.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Ren says, “They know nothing about what is right.”

The conviction of his tone is stern, startling in its fierceness and faith, and Ruby doesn’t think it should be so painful to hear, but it is. 

She’s always been told to believe what is right, to give everything she had to what is right and more—her whole life built on a glittering ground of ideals. It has only recently occurred to her how utterly fragile that ground is, like a thin sheet of ice floating atop a vast and bottomless depth.

Below, where Ruby dares not peer, her dad’s haunted eyes lurk, his hands clutching Mom’s bloodied cloak. There is Penny’s face frozen forever in terror and Pyrrha scattering into ember, arrow embedded into her chest. Yang collapsing inside herself and Blake running away. Weiss trapped behind palisades of snow. 

And Uncle Qrow, with his tired smile and flask worn from overuse. He is there too, stained in violet, dissipating right through her no matter how she tries to catch him. 

They are all bodies drifting in the unfathomable sea, beaten by every wave, calcifying under every guilt and regret. 

They try and they try until it breaks them apart.

Ruby bites her lip, nails digging into her quivering fists, as if all of her is twisting up inside, clawing and scrabbling at the walls for release. 

It hurts and it cuts and she is finally beginning to understand that what is right is not the same as what is good. 

~~~

“I need to get over there.”

Ren and Nora blink at her, one in hesitation and the other in surprise. Ruby shakes her head before they can protest, looking through the space between them at the desperate muddle of limbs and faces trying to reach through the bars. 

“If they won’t let them in, then the only thing we can do is fight off the Grimm on the other side.”

She turns to them, mouth pressed together resolutely. And maybe Ren and Nora were going to argue further, maybe they were simply going to agree, but she never finds out either way as a thunderous crash suddenly rockets the area. People on both sides of the gate scream, some losing their balance and falling, while others hit the floor to cover their heads. Nora yelps, her hammer off-setting her weight and Ren has to grab her by the forearm to keep her on her feet. All the while, Ruby whips her head towards the sound with widening eyes. 

Somewhere behind the wall, a plume of dust is spewing towards the sky.

Distorted roars and howls echo through the air, and the bloodthirst in it makes her skin rise with goosebumps. Someone was fighting the Grimm. Huntsmen. 

“Guys!” They all jump at the voice and then Jaune is skidding to a halt in front of them, gasping for oxygen like a fish on land. “Oh man…I…I can’t believe I actually caught up with you.” 

Ren and Nora talk over each other at him, rendering themselves incoherent, but Jaune just nods and waves an exasperated hand towards his teammates. “Yeah, yeah, I know I’m late, but you two only had to run like a block and a half,” he raises his head, wiping the sweat on his brow as he catches Ruby’s gaze, “You alright?”

The almost palpable concern in his voice is part ridiculous and part endearing, especially when he’s the one that seems ready to keel over at any second. Ruby’s mouth twitches, something strange fluttering in her belly. She turns away to avoid looking at him anymore.

“I’m fine.”

“Jaune, we need a way past the inner wall,” Ren says right away, “They’re not letting anyone through the gate and it sounds like there’s already huntsmen fighting over there.”

Jaune nods, jaw tightening grimly. “Yeah, I took a glance at the perimeters last week. These walls are made of iron reinforced concrete, way tougher stuff than the mud and clay they used to build the outer ones. The only access point is the gate, but the height’s just twenty-three feet, so we can probably climb over. Catapulting somehow would probably be better.”

“Crescent Rose’s recoil should work,” Ruby says and Nora nods, swinging her hammer back over her shoulder, “Same with Magnhild’s.”

“Perfect, let’s do this guys.”

It sounds confident, but they just end up making a break for the wall like spooked mice, trying to find a spot secluded enough not to draw attention. Not the most difficult task when the two guards lose their patience with the disarray and start firing rounds into the sky. Even then, the crowds don’t calm and seem to grow even more restless as a result. 

“I don’t like it,” Jaune says, scowling etched on his face, “They’re way too trigger-happy. People are gonna get hurt.”

“Should someone stay behind?” Ren suggests, exchanging similarly grave looks with Nora. Still repulsed by the guards’ earlier cruelty, they appear ready to volunteer. 

Reluctance knits across Jaune’s brow and he reasons that they’ll likely need as many hands as possible to battle the Grimm (“Did you guys HEAR that roar?) Ruby is about to speak herself, when Jaune chooses that moment to shift around, moving the bulk of him from her line of sight. All the words she had then, die promptly in her throat. 

With Jaune out of the way, it’s a clear view for her of the top of the wall. 

Of the thing’s black face peeking down at them. 

It is a glimpse. A split of second at best.

And it goes on and on and on because its face its face itsface— 

_Little flower child,_ a voice says in her head, clearly, suddenly, _I know what you have lost._

Ruby does not think. A charge of instinct raises her scythe, steadies her finger enough on the trigger to pull. A double round is already blasting towards the thing’s face before the rest of them can blink. 

Nora and Ren yelp, ducking automatically, while Jaune flinches backwards. 

“Ruby, what the—“

The smoke disperses, but there’s no corpse and she practically bowls Jaune over in her rush to the wall. 

“Something was there!” she manages to jumble out, “At the top! It was trying to get over!”

Jaune shouts something else, his voice pitched slightly higher with alarm, melding with Ren and Nora’s who are yelling too, and it’s all blurred out in a cacophony of words and sounds that Ruby doesn’t hear a whit of. 

With a leap, she lands on the wall, running up vertically for six, seven, eight steps before spinning Crescent Rose over her shoulder. When she pulls the trigger, the recoil sends her high, and she soars towards the ledge as if on wings.

 _I know what you have lost._ The voice says again, streaming down the curves of her mind. Ruby clenches her teeth, ignoring it even though she can feel its presence now, like spidery, frigid fingers tapping at the doors and cupboards of her mind. 

Images web across, conjured up in clouds of black vapor. A sunlit school. A whole and smiling team.

 _Wouldn’t you like it back?_ The voice asks.

Ruby’s hands are near slick with sweat on Crescent Rose’s handle, the blood leeched clear out of her skin. Swinging the scythe back, she tumbles with its momentum into a mid-air flip. The ledge atop the wall is only a sliver in width, but Ruby’s done this enough times to know she can make it. She ignores the voice and the images that unfurl before her thoughts. Pink bows and bronze circlets. White petals in the wind. 

A red and tattered cape.

Ruby lands on the ledge, stumbling so hard she almost goes plummeting. 

_Wouldn’t you like it back?_

The cape flashes again. Closer. And she remembers it in her hands just this morning, the scent faded, almost gone. Gone. 

Whiskey and blood and forest skies…

Ruby’s chest is pounding and for a minute the world seems to tremble, before she realizes that it’s actually her. The voice echoes again and it sounds softer, a soothing croon.

 _Flower child, wouldn’t you like him back?_

She bites her lip, wondering if pain will drive the voice out of her head as effectively as it does nightmares. The rational side of her registers that it’s probably a Geist. It shouldn’t sound so human or be able to speak, but they have always lured in their victims with personal temptations. Things they could have. Things they’ve lost.

Ruby smothers the little spark of hope that keeps trying to alight in her. It’s not possible. _Not possible._ She knows better and she’ll not let it prey upon her pain.

Beowolves howl in the distance and she can see the destroyed husks of buildings and houses, and the toppled wreckage of nearby trees. Sharp cracks explode somewhere in the great clumps of dust and there blazing is the scarlet of fire. _Yang…_

The gray and flat sky crackles with a sound that rattles bones. Lightning comes out in a golden-white bolt, piercing into the dust and raising a wave of monstrous screams which ripple through the land. _Dad…_

The vice around Ruby’s heart loosens for an instant, swept off in a flood of relief. So they are here after all. Her family, the only pieces left of it, and they are what is real. Her father and her sister. Just like Nora and Ren. Like Jaune.

Ruby turns her scythe, facing towards the battleground where Yang and her dad fight. Her finger is already around the trigger, ready to squeeze. The cool, damp presence ripples in her head and she steels herself to it again. The voice, when it speaks, has changed. 

_Ruby…_

Crescent Rose slides out of her hand, hurling all twenty-three odd feet toward the ground. She doesn’t notice. 

It is rough and gravelly and swimming in sadness, and she knows it. Has known it all her life. It punches a hole right through her, deep enough to bruise her soul. Geist can’t do that, her heart whispers desperately, even as her mind drones on that it’s not possible, not real, no matter how much she wants it to be. 

Ruby’s mouth parts, dry as a bone. 

“…Uncle Qrow?” 

Something gleams a few paces from her feet. It’s an oozing, shimmering shade of black that seems to seep out of the concrete. It curls and it bends and then Ruby realizes what she’s looking at. A footprint.

A trail of them, large and narrow and almost human. They leak from the cracks and down the side of the wall, leading beyond the path and up to the hills away from the village.

Ruby stares. She looks back to her father’s lightning and her sister’s fire, but the noises suddenly seem to come from somewhere in the great invisible distance. Somewhere far, far away.

She leaps from the wall and snatches Crescent Rose up from where it lays discarded on the ground. In the grass, the footprints are as brilliant as fresh blood. And she knows better. She knows better. He’s taught her better than this. Let go, her mind urges, Let him go. 

Ruby does not even have the strength to try.

She breaks into a run, following the tracks. Her eyes burn and she wonders if she’s crying.

She does not turn back again. 

~~~

_A little girl stands alone in the snow, staring up at the endlessly white sky. Her boots are unlaced. Her eyes are pools of liight. Black feathers crumble in her tiny hands. When she whispers, it is a sound that is meek and ravaged by hope._

Uncle Qrow? 


	6. VI.

VI.

~~~

_The child is coming._

_The Grimm raises its creaking head, opaque eyes staring dead into the trees. Hunger breathes cold through its insides, shriveling flesh and bone. The man the girl had lost (her father?), it had taken far more power than expected to conjure his voice, extracted from whatever fleeting traces of his aura left in the ruins of that human village._

_It would have to eat her quickly. Before the beowolves and ursai it lured out return and smell blood. A shame it would not be able to savor her. The Grimm is old and has seen all the heartbroken little orphans of the world, but never has it come across such sadness in a child. Such guilt and desperation. The girl moves like a huntress. She isn’t a fool, but still she comes looking for him. She hopes._

_It is almost curious, but the feeling is fleeting, flickering, dying a mayfly’s death in the roaring rage of hunger._

_Something somewhere hisses through the bramble._

_The Grimm’s eyes glitter and it lowers its feet, cracked and black-stained, into the grass. The child must be here and the Grimm’s mouth unhinges, a void stretching out long and gaping and depthless, ready to swallow her whole. Twigs snap and rocks tumble._

_A snake slithers into the open. Thick as a trunk, glossy scales and red beads for eyes. Death-white._

Hello, pet.

_The Grimm does not have time to even blink before the snake is wrapped around its leg, wounding upward to coil across its middle._

My, you have found something interesting, haven’t you? 

_The coil squeezes, cutting into the Grimm with rippling, iron muscle. Agony flares like fire through it, but the Grimm does not whimper or howl. It does not register the pain at all through the cacophony in its mind of theQueen theQueen the QueentheQueen the Queen…_

_Instantly, every scrap and drop of its essence wants to curl down and grovel._

_The Queen is here. She is here in these ancient and poisonous woods, and it does not question why. Already, it simply wants to please Her. It starves for Her praise._

Always so loyal my pets are. _The serpent’s tongue feathers out._ There is something I require from you. That girl who comes. Do not eat her (eAT her). She is the last link to Qrow Branwen (QRowBRANWENqrowBrAnwen Qrow Branwen). Some of young Cinder’s reports need…confirmation and Lionheart is proving a coward. Get Qrow Branwen’s remains from her. Whatever fragment of him there is left. I’m sure you’ll think of something. The humans in Mistral have kept you fed for so long, be sure to repay them in kind. 

_She laughs and it is such a stunning sound, hissing and low and writhing in the dark. The Grimm knows what it has to do. The Grimm is smarter than most of its kind. The Grimm can please Her and perhaps the girl would be its reward._

No. 

_Pain spears through its neck, spiraling down its corners and tips. The Grimm shrieks this time, vision blackening as the snake’s fangs sink in like large serrated hooks. What did it do? It wonders frantically. What did it do what did it do what did it do?_

The girl is mine (Mine mine mine). Bring her to me as well. Understand?

_The bite presses deeper, the pressure crushing. It whimpers in agreement, arms and shoulders quaking._

Good. _The Grimm chokes as the hold lessens._ Oh, I do not revel in my harshness with you, pet, but you cannot comprehend the meaning of that girl. The importance of this. The left eye is finally closed, but what has it seen? 

_Her voice grows soft and black, a terrible whisper of fury._

What has it seen?

~~~

The forest prickles with dankness and cold. Ruby threads through the trees in a blinding rush, her cape snagging on loose branches and stumps. Her footsteps crunch on the carpeted floor of pine and tiny bones. 

In the shifting darkness, she’s almost afraid the tracks will disappear but they glow, glimmering blood-red, as soon as she crosses into the shadows. It’s only more proof something is leading her astray, tricking her. A Grimm could never have anything she truly wants. A little corner of her understands that. 

But all of her knows she can’t turn back. 

Ruby struggles through a patch of thistles, her cloak tearing on the bristled edges. Her nails dig and dig into her palms until dull pain radiates through her hands. She doesn’t feel it. Not really. Ruby is burning inside out. And no matter how hard she tries, she cannot stop hoping. Hoping in the same way she had despaired.

Desperately. Helplessly.

(His voice…that was his voice there’s no mistaking it and she never thought (never thought never thought) she’d ever hear it again…and it had to be him, had to be, and he wasn’t gone and it was all just a bad dream, a nightmare, he never would’ve left her alone—)

The last footprint disappears into a clump of bramble and Ruby unhooks Crescent Rose, clearing the vines out with one swipe. She bursts through the straggling ends and can barely hear her own feet over the pounding of her heart.

_Please._ The child in her whimpers, thinking of crooked smiles, of endless swamps and purple blood. _Please…_

The Grimm is waiting for her. Ruby freezes in her tracks. 

It is all smoke and sludge and cracked skin. The limbs are disturbing in their human resemblance, bare and black-nailed hands and feet, the legs crossed at the ankles over a slab of rock. A fetid stench clings to the air. 

It has no eyes, only the crimson-webbed mask that all Grimm wear, hanging over the top half of its face like a blindfold. 

The mouth is tiny, fish-like and unmoving, even as the voice creeps back through her skull.

_Hello, child._ A limp hand rises, beckoning her forth. _Come closer now. Don’t be shy._

Ruby does not move. Her hands tighten on Crescent Rose, the metal grooves nearly embedding into her palms.

“What are you?” she whispers.

_It matters not what I am. You are here for him, aren’t you?_ The head tilts to the side and she can hear tendons popping, something scraping like stone against stone. _Qrow Branwen._

She tries not to flinch at his name, lips pressed tight. Do not show fear. 

“Why did I hear his voice?” she says, unable to keep the slight tremble from her voice, “Tell me what trick you’re trying to pull.”

_A trick, is it?_

Long arms stretch out, resting on the knees. Its face does not change and yet it seems amused.

_Flower child, why are you here?_

Ruby blinks. “I…” she stammers, “I-I…” 

No words follow.

The Grimm’s voice is a croon, almost kind. 

_There is such ache in you. So deep and vast for someone so young. I have what you have lost, flower child. I have the relief to your pain. Let me show you._

_Don’t be afraid._

_Don’t be afraid._

And it is a mistake, she knows it is, but Ruby is as helpless to her next words as she would be if they weren’t hers at all.

“Show me.”

The world blurs.

~~~ 

Raven tugs the boy through the alleys of Mistral, brisk-paced, eyes and ears long tuned for danger since a pack of Grimm broke down the outer wall. The boy yelps and curses as he’s practically dragged along, her long legs taking strides that are twice what he can keep up with.

“Where are we going?” he says, clinging to his backpack strap.

“I told you not to speak.”

She can see his face scrunch up from the corner of her eye, cheeks puffed out with a child’s frustration. He is just a boy. How the Wizard’s incarnations are chosen remains a mystery to her, but she had been expecting…she did not think…she did not think it would be a boy.

Raven’s teeth clench. A child without foundation, no matter how destined, is only another weakling. Ozpin had failed in more ways than one by getting himself killed. This vessel had no power, no experience, not even an aura that could manifest itself. Was this weakling to go up against Salem?

Was this what her brother died for?

“Ow! Stop, that hurts!” A pained gasp rips her from her thoughts. When she glances over her shoulder, the boy is wincing, trying to pull away from her crushing grip. Raven blinks in surprise, quickly loosening her hold. She turns around and keeps walking even as she feels his puzzled glare searing into her back. 

“Hurry up,” she says simply, “We must leave Mistral.”

“WHAT?” The boy grinds his feet hard, digging lines into the ground that startle Raven enough into stopping. “Are you kidding me? I just spent a day and a half getting here!”

Her eyes narrow. “It isn’t safe anymore. No one can be trusted.”

The boy’s mouth parts, no doubt to argue further, before he suddenly stops. His green and brown-flecked eyes go still and blank. Raven’s brow arches and impatient as she is, forces herself to wait. When the light returns to the boy’s eyes, he sends her an odd look.

“He wants to know…why you think that.”

Raven scoffs, crossing her arms. “You were out of touch with the world, Ozpin. Lionheart has ulterior motives. And he is looking for you.”

She directs this last part with a pointed look at the boy, who gulps and seems to shrink. 

“H-He’s asking if there’s anything more specific about Lionheart.”

“Would I not have told you if there was?” she breathes through her nose, “The curtain lifts when it lifts. I just report what I see.”

The boy stares at her, bemused and brows knit. 

“Is it…Salem?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” The words are sharp, weighted down by faint accusation. None of Ozpin’s calmness is in them. Only a fiery anger so young that it can only belong to the child alone. “I had to sneak out in the middle of the night, you know. I couldn’t even leave a note for my aunt. I’ll never be able to go back.”

Raven frowns, eyes flashing. “Am I to blame for that? If you wanted to keep her safe then—“

“You knew about _him_!” the boy shouts, jabbing a finger at his own head, “You knew about me and where I was. The raven our dogs kept barking at—that was you, wasn’t it?”

She stares at him, face revealing nothing. His teeth grind and with all his strength he yanks his hand back. She lets him, arm falling to her side.

“You never said anything,” the boy spits, “You never even showed yourself. I came all the way to Mistral. I left the only family I’ve got behind and now you’re saying we have to—“

“I’m not overjoyed with the situation either,” Raven says, voice low and sharp as a knife, “You think I like towing a brat along? I’ve long repaid my debt to Ozpin and I certainly don’t owe you a thing. Every fiber in me is screaming against this, but Qrow wouldn’t—“

She halts practically mid-word, but it matters little. The shadow of Ozpin crests in the boy’s features, aging them with a pity and understanding that makes her stomach turn. 

“Qrow,” she says again, with careful steadiness, “was suppose to meet you here. I never revealed myself because he was to find you in Mistral.” Her fingers curl, packed into blood-leeched fists. “But that, I suppose, was not meant to be.”

There is a beat of silence. The boy keeps looking at her, all of Ozpin’s sorrow swimming in his eyes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, without indicating who’s speaking.

Raven tears her gaze away. “Don’t waste your breath. I need you to hurry, not your condolences.”

It doesn’t change anything anyway. Raven curses at the great ache rising behind her eyes, wishing she could will such weakness away. She starts walking, slow enough that the child can keep pace but she still doesn’t hear him move. 

“What about Miss Rose?” 

Raven stops. 

“Uhm, I think he means that girl,” he continues, “The one I saw at the inn.”

“I know who she is.” Taiyang’s second child. Raven would never forget the girl’s face that night, the sincerity and innocence of it still, so startling in her resemblance to Summer it’s as if she’d spoken to a ghost. “We leave her be. She’s much better defended than you are.”

“But she’s a target too,” the boy fiddles with his backpack straps, baffled by his own words, “Salem will know by now. About her eyes.” 

“She is not my priority. Silver eyes or not, whatever impact she can have pales in comparison to yours.”

As the words leave her lips Raven wonders, perhaps for the first time, if she is being cruel. It is merely the truth and yet she does not much enjoy the reproachful way the child looks at her. 

“She is Taiyang and Summer’s daughter,” he says, “And Qrow loved her.”

Raven’s mouth twists. “So? I’m plenty aware of that.”

“They’ve all touched her life. Gave a piece of themselves. In many ways, little Ruby is all that’s left of your team.”

“Get to the point, old man,” she snaps, eyes narrowing, “What are you trying to say?” 

The boy is quiet for another moment, less perturbed than he’s been so far with her fraying temper. Maybe he is casting judgement upon her. It would not have been the first time.

“The point,” he says, carefully, “is that if you’re looking to assuage your guilt, this could not be a better option.”

The boy yelps when her hand shoots out, almost of its own will, and seizes his collar. The fabric twists, tearing beneath her sharp nails as she wrenches him into the air.

“Careful the assumptions you make,” she hisses, “I am not so weak as that.”

Small, feeble hands scratch at her wrist. The boy glares at her and there is no fear in his eyes—only defiance and frustration and a disappointment that makes her blood boil. 

What does Ozpin know? 

Raven had never cared for the oath of huntsmen, the nonsense and sentiment of heroes and ideals or if this pathetically broken world could be saved. She had wanted the sheen of a blade, the squelch of mud under boots, the stink and sweat and adrenaline of chasing prey. It had always called to her—that strange and elusive freedom only the tribe could offer—and when Raven finally, finally surrendered to it, there was of course the price to be paid. 

And oh, how she paid. 

Freedom, as she learned, was in the form of Taiyang’s tear-stained eyes. In Summer’s funeral she watched from the treetops. In a daughter with golden hair she would never know. Freedom was parting from her twin. It was accepting his anger and disgust and a world without him. Freedom was bringing Qrow’s ashes back to Vale, holding that puny jar, realizing they ended on threats and regrets.

Raven has no room for guilt. No time for shame. No right to either.

What does Ozpin know? 

“Ruby Rose is not my concern,” she says again, hand hardening with every word, “And if I hear you mentioning her again, you will not be leaving Mistral of your own two legs.”

Without waiting for a reply, she drops the child, who staggers and barely catches himself. 

“Now come,” she says staring holes into the distance, “We’ve wasted enough time.”

The boy rubs his throat, his gaze still upon her. She has the most irksome feeling that it is with pity again, but Raven doesn’t turn around. 

She’s almost at the end of the alleyway when she finally hears him follow.

~~~

_He begins to leave when Ruby is ten._

_Dad had gotten a lot better and Yang was old enough now to help out. Things were breaking around the house. Glass cups and mirrors and stair boards. Windows inexplicably left open that drench the room in rain and muck._

_Uncle Qrow looks more tired than ever. He still plays with her and holds her, but there is a certain restraint to it now. An anxiety. It would’ve hurt if his eyes didn’t look so sad._

_He starts talking a lot to Dad, at night when they think she’s asleep. He makes calls on his scroll that sometimes last hours. Ruby sees him watching the sky. Things continue to break. A fire catches on the rug. Yang snaps her wrist while climbing a tree._

_And one day, Ruby comes downstairs and sees him strapping his scythe to his back, a bag slung over his shoulder._

_She tries everything to make him stay—begging, bargaining, crying and wailing until her cheeks turn apple-red. Uncle Qrow just kneels down, waiting for her sobs to calm into sniffles, before dabbing her face with a sleeve._

_“I don’t want you to go,” she hiccups._

_“I have to.”_

_“Why?”_

_He looks at her, smiling a sad little smile. “It’s not easy to explain. But I’ll be back soon as I can and I’ll bring you something good. A new book, yeah? Or a Grimm’s fang.”_

_Ruby shakes her head, refusing to take the bait. “No, no, don’t go. Don’t go. I need you.”_

_A quiet chuckle. He cups her face with one fond hand._

_“Oh, little rose, you don’t need me.”_

~~~

Ruby snaps her eyes open. 

She is at home, standing in the field. It is spring and bees dart through the honeysuckles, the long grass ripples in patterns against Patch’s warm wind. Clumps of snow still sit in the shade, but it smells of sunlight and fresh soil. Ruby blinks.

_Wha…?_

And then something small and red sprints past her legs. It’s a little girl, pale-skinned and black hair cropped short, cape billowing after her as she moved.

Ruby watches this child’s version of herself with wide and blank eyes. She is giggling, crouching down into the long grass to examine something in the dirt and when she surfaces again, Yang is standing next to her, golden hair still tied up in pigtails. A shiny beetle sits in her sister’s cupped hands and they stick their faces close, grinning at it. 

When they look up and wave, Ruby almost thinks it’s at her.

But it’s not. 

She never realized how much younger he looked back then, until he walks past her—his face free of stubble and tired lines, the bruises beneath his eyes still faint. His expression is idle, with some faint amusement hidden in the corners and gods that’s right, she remembers now, back when Dad still couldn’t get out of bed, how he would bring them into town for errands and how he’d let them take the long way. 

“Stop it,” she whispers, watching him walk towards them and place a gentle hand on her head, “Stop it, please, I don’t want to see this…”

The voice seems to rustle straight out of the field itself. It is smoother now, like a woman’s in the wind, like something slithering through dead leaves.

_Why? Do you not miss him? Do you not long for these times gone past?_

Uncle Qrow rises and Yang and her are skipping and hopscotching, jumping off rocks and playing tag as they follow him down the path. Ruby watches his back, his dark legs striding forward through the weeds. It’s the little details present that frighten her, how he use to walk a little slouched, with hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched, how one eye would crinkle more than the other when he squinted. 

It’s as if her memories have been spilled out and slipped into a projector reel. 

At some point, Ruby watches herself jump onto his arm and though she doesn’t remember what she’d been saying, Uncle Qrow grins and swings her to rest properly against his hip. She shrieks with glee and sticks her tongue out at Yang, who only rolls her eyes, accepting Uncle Qrow’s hand when it’s offered as recompense. They walk again, interlocked, and the memory version of Ruby giggles, throwing her little arms around Uncle Qrow’s neck and kissing his cheek. This makes him raise a surprised eyebrow, but his lips twitch and delight softens the haggard edges of his face.

Ruby is shaking. 

“Stop,” she says, voice watery and frail, “Please, stop.” 

_You blame yourself, don’t you, flower child? It was your fault, wasn’t it?_

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I was trying to help. I-I thought I could…I wanted to help.”

_Of course your intentions were good._ The voice coos. _Of course they were. But what matters in the end is not what was meant to happen, but what did._

The field shimmers and blurs, as if air on a breathlessly hot noon.

Ruby opens her eyes to a night sky.

Uncle Qrow is sitting under the ash tree, patting the spot next to him. They’d traced the old tales trapped in the stars, which she came to realize weren’t always the most beautiful or deep. 

They’d choked down laughter at the bear who’d tried to slurp up the sky like soup or the giant children who dropped a crumb from their dinner table which shattered the moon. He teased her for rolling her eyes at the parted lovers but falling into shambles at the turtle trapped on its back. 

Ruby comes to the faint realization that she’d been happy then. For though the dawn brought her mother’s empty grave and her father’s broken eyes, those nights had been perfect—a delicate pocket of childhood Uncle Qrow had affixed with his long, deft hands.

“Why are you showing me this?” Ruby croaks.

_To prove a point. You wish him back, it’s clear, but you are wary. There is no reason to be wary._

She shakes her head. “I can’t trust you. I can’t _believe_ you. You’re a Grimm.”

_I am, but I know you’ve realized by now that my kind are very different in Anima. We are stronger, better, capable of things you cannot imagine._

The world blurs, images moving faster now, disconnected. 

There is Uncle Qrow showing her how to use the oven and where to smack the tele-box to get the picture moving again. He is clipping her hair back with clumsy fingers, plopping Zwei onto her lap from where he’d rescued him from a ditch. They are chasing each other with the garden hoses and then she and Yang are tucked under his arms, swinging like sacks of flour, while he trudges across the creek. He’s tickling her and tossing her into the air like a ball. They are dancing in the kitchen, her feet stepping on his as he guides her…

A hard, unforgiving lump grows in Ruby’s throat. 

“What do you want?” she whispers, “You must want something in exchange.”

_Clever child. But is that of any import? What would you give to have him back? Your poor uncle who you couldn’t save._

…She is in her old bedroom. She and Yang are running around the beds, screaming and giggling as Uncle Qrow swoops in and catches them by the waists. 

“You got me, Uncle Qrow!” her past self giggles, “You got me!”

He ruffles her hair and draws her and Yang up close, holding them like he never plans to let go. “Yeah, kiddo, I gotcha.” 

And then they crash onto the bed, sheets flying and laughing hysterically, and Uncle Qrow is laughing too—deep and rare and real and Ruby is breaking, _breaking_ , the want in her so taunt and tight it feels like her ribs will snap in two.

_What would you give to have him back?_

A whisper slips through the halls of her soul, rising up, bursting forth with a single answer. The only one she has.

Anything.

Anything.

“Bring him back,” Ruby says, tears burning down her face, “Please.”

The world blurs.


	7. VII.

VII.

~~~

Her dad knocks off more Grimm than her. 

Yang mops the hair out of her face, trying not to pant, as the last Ursa Major crashes to a giant heap in front of her. The air tingles with dust and static, scuttling across her skin and making her clothes stick close. Taiyang straightens a few feet away, perfectly relaxed. 

Sparks jump and flicker off him as he cracks his knuckles and the sky’s snarling recedes back to a rumble. Yang can’t help the moment of old awe which courses through her. 

Almost a decade’s passed since she’s last seen her dad’s Semblance, but it’s still as insane and breath-taking as she remembers it. 

“Predictable again,” he says, raising a brow, “This time you were sloppy on the footwork too.”

And the moment is gone. Yang rolls her eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah, don’t think this got you out of anything, dad. I still want to know what’s happening with Ruby, so spill.” 

Taiyang exhales a sharp, tired breath from his nose, lips quirking in a mirthless smile. “Knew it wouldn’t be that easy.”

She simply crosses her arms. They are silent for another beat, her dad seemingly gathering his thoughts, before he speaks again.

“They’re called Silver Eyes. All I really know about them is that they’re a power rooted in the ancient races and their stories date back longer than the Maidens. Ruby had hers passed down from Summer and I don’t think even she ever really understood it.” His head lifts to the faraway hills. “Legend goes that those who possess these eyes are born-warriors. They’re chosen by the gods as defenders of light and are the natural enemies of the Grimm and darkness.” 

Yang’s eyes widen, though really she is not so surprised. They’d spent many a night up beneath the covers whispering dreams to each other about the schools and huntsmen. Even as Yang gushed about adventures and thrills and the wide, wide world, it’d been clear Ruby had only thought about one thing. 

It takes a specialness to want to help people as badly as Ruby does. A specialness and simplicity. A pure and profound desire. 

Her sister is meant for blood and battlefields, scars and tarnished hands and the dying screams of Grimm. Her sister with her little red hood, who smells of roses and cookie dough. 

Yang breathes shakily, trying to cover it with a smile. 

“W-Well, that’s great, isn’t it? Ruby’s…part of a legend now. She’s gonna be a hero just like she’s always wanted to be….” A memory of Lionheart’s office passes through her thoughts, the roof peeled away like the skin of a fruit. Ruby’s face contorted, hair whipping across like the ire of a storm as light sprung from her eyes.

“Shit,” Yang realizes, “She can’t control it, can she?”

Her dad manages a laugh, though his eyes are grave. “No, and at least from what I’ve heard, no one ever has. Not even Summer. Not fully. She always sort of hoped Ruby would never need to deal with it.”

“Why?”

“Well, Oz told us that the ability’s usually dormant. Sometimes for the owner’s entire life unless awakened by something…life-changing.” His mouth twists and Yang feels her heart lurch in understanding. 

“Pyrrha,” she whispers.

Taiyang nods. “She was the start of it,” his eyebrows furrow, deepening the lines of his face, “Except what happened at the tower was supposed to be just a one-off. A tremor you could say. Ruby held out for a long time, coping with everything best she could. But when Qrow…”

He trails off, closing his eyes for a moment with a sigh. 

“The Silver Eyes are fueled by raw emotion. They can sense it in the subconscious, all those feelings we don’t even know are there ourselves. Be it anger or determination.” His features loosen. “Or grief.” 

Yang says nothing, a hard, wordless ache in her chest.

“And it’s waking up all at once,” her father continues, “You can’t imagine the full breadth of power like the Silver Eyes, Yang. It’s something primal, and it doesn’t listen to what Ruby understands or what she rationalizes. It just acts on what she feels, deep down inside.” 

_Give it back._ Ruby’s voice rings in her skull. _Those belong to Uncle Qrow._

Words crystallized in ice, as alien and ruthless as the edge of a knife. And yet Yang cannot stop hearing the youngness of it, the echo of a vast and frantic sadness. The darkening of her father’s eyes says he hadn’t been deaf to it either.

“Lionheart views her as a weapon. Ozpin did too, to an extent. He never shared the reason with me, probably ‘cause I was so angry, but I’m sure it’s why he asked her to Beacon two years early.” A grimace rises over his lips and it is of thunder, full of disgust and tired disappointment. 

“They think they can use her. That she’s one of the warriors etched into the stone of all those stupid old caves and temples. They see those eyes and expect the legend, when really she’s just…” He stops, face growing pinched, before the tension in his back releases, as if depleted of all strength. 

“…a little girl who wants her uncle back.”

The breeze swells in the ensuing silence, dispersing the dead Grimm, carrying their black flakes away. Yang feels the dust swirl around her legs, the heaviness of dirt trying to shake loose from her hair. 

“Don’t be so depressing, old man,” she says at last, “Ruby’s way stronger than you think. Uncle Qrow meant a lot to her, but…he’s gone now and she knows she can’t change that.”

Taiyang glances at her, a glint in his dark blue eyes. A secret thought that slips and slides into her veins like melted ice.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he says, “Does she really?” 

Yang stares at him, not understanding. 

And then Jaune comes racing through the dust, paste-white, voice shivering with alarm and a hand pointed towards the distant woods.

~~~

Ruby opens her eyes.

The faintly rancid air of Mistral’s forests suffocates her breath and gone are the waving fields of Patch, the scent of flowers and earth. Gone is the forgiving sunlight, blocked by the twining arms of trees. Gone is her sister’s laughter and Uncle Qrow’s hand running soft through her hair. Ruby’s heart stutters in her chest and then it falls, a makeshift tent against roaring hail. Had it been only a dream?

_I weave no dreams._

The Grimm is closer now, sitting at the base of the rock. The patterns of its mask are raised, jagged lines like angry scars. Its mouth is lifted in a shriveled smile. Ruby stares, every hair prickling.

 _Still so afraid, flower child?_

“Just tell me what I have to do,” she says, in a voice that tries to sound strong but only succeeds in sounding hollow, “Tell me what you want.”

 _Of course._ Its head tilts. _For the moment, however, my energy is running low. I need some replenishment._

Ruby hasn’t even processed the words before the Grimm stands up. Its reedy legs creak and crack, and it sags to one side, long black feet jutting at the wrong angles. Not a Geist after all, a little part of Ruby still categorizes, but more akin to the Nuckelavee. 

It moves with startling speed to one of the trees, a wretched hand resting light across the bark that grays and begins to rot. 

_Listen._ It says and a mere second later, there is the sound of nettle being flattened, the wet slap of boots on swampy ground. 

Distant grumbles are heard, the aggravated words of men as two figures approach amongst the damp shadows. Broken strings of their conversation tumble through the silence. 

“Damn junior hunters…know the way of Mistral…bringing in Haven…now we gotta…fucking self-righteous…”

They step closer into the fractured light and Ruby sees they have the uniforms and gear of security detail. Their helmets are tucked beneath their arms and the faces are weathered and lined with irritation. Scars run ragged over their faces, one across the left cheek and the other down through a whitened eye. 

Ruby stares and stares and realizes all at once that they are the guardsmen from the gate, that the Grimm’s jaws are open, stretching far wider than the tiny mouth should be able to. That she’s about to watch them die.

“Wait…” her voice is a croak, too quiet, choked by ice, “STOP!”

The Grimm explodes forward, colliding into the closer man with a force that squeals through the air. In hindsight, his neck probably snapped immediately but it still drives its twisted limb into his chest. It makes a crunch as it punches through the armor and there’s a blunt crack that will echo in Ruby’s sleep for the rest of her life. 

The body spasms and it’s too dim to see but she hears the blood splattering out, hitting the ground in a staccato of beats. 

The Grimm’s hand is digging, digging around like fingers through a cupboard and it pulls out something that jolts and pumps with a squelch and it doesn’t even look before shoving it into the cave of its mouth and swallowing whole. 

It’s happens within seconds. The space between seconds.

The other man screams. He fumbles for his gun, drops it. It takes him too long to try and run and the Grimm’s fingers are around his ankle. The bone snaps with shuddering ease and he thuds to the ground, a violent gasp of breath knocked out of him. Without even a second’s pause, he starts trying to crawl, scrabbling at the filthy ground. The Grimm staggers upright, shifting to him and something yellow pulls back along the mask, resembling eyes—

A bullet streaks by its face. 

“I said stop,” Crescent Rose nearly slides from Ruby’s shoulder, her finger slick on the handle, “Get away from him.”

She is quaking all over, cold sweat slithering down the ridges of her spine. 

The Grimm turns around, not moving. Staring at her.

“ _Now!_ ”

Rickety legs lurch a step back. It is statue-still, the corpse of the already-dead guard mangled at its feet.

_You would protect him? These two men, who slandered your family and everything you stood for. Cowards who reek of easy cruelty. They are not worth saving._

“Everyone’s worth saving,” Ruby whispers and her grip trembles on the gun crank.

The monster is quiet. So quiet that she can hear the man now, the mewling noises of pain spilling from his lips.

“Please,” he whimpers, babbling to no one, tears leaking from his one good eye, “Please, fuck, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, not here, not in this shithole, I don’t wanna die…”

The man’s wound is a broken fountain, gushing red in long arcing spurts. He is bleeding and bleeding and the smell of life blood is thick as fog. Ruby’s mouth is a white line. She remembers the lone huntsman they found in Shion. His yellowed, dying eyes.

 _I know you realize it._ The Grimm whispers. _A huntress should not be so naïve._

The black lips twitch, an inky and endless grin.

_Will you let this waste of a man be a waste to the very end?_

She ignores it. The forest is alive with darkness and she can hear the moaning wails of beowolves, catching whiff of blood. Her heart has lodged itself somewhere at the back of her head, so every pulse sucks a bit of the color from her vision. She looks at the man, looks him in the eye and sees a death full of terror and agony.

Ruby decides. 

“It’s okay,” she says, softly, “It’s gonna be okay. I won’t let it hurt you.”

He just gapes at her. 

“Please,” he whimpers, “I don’t wanna die.” 

The face is naked with fear.

Ruby closes her eyes, breathing a deep, shuddering breath.

And then she pulls the trigger.

It takes just an instant. A millisecond. A miniscule drop in the bottomless well of time. Yet it is time enough. For choices. For change.

For entire worlds to end.

~~~

_There is blood on Uncle Qrow one night._

_Ruby has been tossing and turning for hours, unable to find sleep since he tucked her and Yang in, and nudged Zwei out of the doorway and checked on Daddy. Since she heard the window slide up in his room and not back down._

_The summer wind rustles through the wall and the curtains flap and it isn’t loud enough to wake Yang, but Ruby hears it echo and echo in her ears. The big blackbird that had been cawing outside all day is finally gone. She remembers how Uncle Qrow kept glaring at it, how his face got whiter and whiter as the hours went by._

_She doesn’t know when he comes back. There is a thud, like something landing on the floor, and the window shuts. His dull footsteps leave the room and she hears them drag down the stairs._

_It’s beyond late. The bruise-black of the sky is actually turning pink and she knows how much trouble she’ll be in if she’s caught awake._

_Ruby climbs out of bed anyway._

_A dim light is on in the living room and from her perch on the landing, she can see the glint of his scythe on the ground, still unfolded, as if simply dropped where it was. Her uncle is sitting on the couch, head bowed, staring at something in his hands that Ruby can’t see._

_Her tiny fingers curve along the jamb._

_“Uncle Qrow?”_

_She doesn’t expect him to jump, but he does, almost violently, before he wrenches around, the light catching his wild eyes. Old blood flakes off the side of his right cheek, flowing lazily from a jagged slash. His hands and sleeves are splattered maroon._

_Ruby freezes. Almost blankly, she realizes she’s never seen so much blood before. It almost looks like finger paint._

_Uncle Qrow stares at her, just as frozen, blinking with an unfocused gaze. His flask is held loosely in one hand._

_“Ruby?” he rasps, lips colorless and trembling. Something in his tone breaks the spell over her limbs._

_“You’re hurt,” she says, all in a rush, and takes a step forward. He flinches back as if he’s been burnt, his wan face leeching to a sickly yellow. For the first time in her life, something akin to fear shines in his eyes._

_“W-Wait, I…” he looks at his hands, curling them into fists, “I’m not—don’t—“_

_Many years will go by before she understands the note in his voice then or even possesses the words for them. Surprise. Horror. Shame._

_But for now, at eight years old, she just doesn’t want him to look at her like that. Ruby bites her lip and frowns hard, almost stubbornly, and she runs forward, wrapping little arms around his waist, even though the stench of blood is so strong and heavy it makes her head spin._

_He goes stiff as a board. An eternity passes before his hands move to her shoulders._

_“Damn it,” he mutters, “Please be a dream.”_

_“I’m not a dream,” Ruby murmurs into his shirt, offended, “You said a bad word, Uncle Qrow.”_

_A laugh rumbles deep in his chest, but it isn’t a nice sound—only rough and dragging and empty._

_“Right, sorry, I…” he sighs, and his hands lay gently over her, “You shouldn’t be up.”_

_The reproach is weak, without anger and mostly sad. It makes her chest hurt and she balls up his shirt into tiny fists, pressing a cheek into his stomach with childish resolution._

_“I couldn’t sleep,” she says, “I heard you leave. Where did you go?”_

_There’s no immediate answer. Uncle Qrow takes so long to reply in fact, that she almost thinks he’s not going to when he does._

_“A place I thought I was done with.”_

_She looks up. “But you aren’t?”_

_“No.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Because it’s not done with me,” he says, softly, “And maybe it never will be.”_

_He still doesn’t say where he went, but his face looks tired, even more so than usual, and there’s this giant, ugly shadow across his eyes that Ruby doesn’t know how to make go away._

_Face scrunching, she regards the stains on his shirt. They’re a browning crimson shade and he’ll tell her later that it’s all Grimm blood, even though Grimm blood is pitch black in color._

_“Hold on, Uncle Qrow,” she says and slides off his lap. She runs to the medicine cabinet in the hallway bathroom, stepping onto the little stool and rummaging through the first-aid box until she finds what she’s looking for._

_He’s draining his flask when she hurries back, but stows it away when he catches sight of her._

_“Huh,” he says, face softening at the pile of band aids and antibiotic cream in her arms, “You gonna patch me up, rosebud?”_

_She nods, a determined set in her brows, as she climbs back onto his lap._

_“You haveta keep still,” she says, repeating how Momma use to chide her, warm clean hands patching up a scrape or bruise, “It might sting, but you gotta be brave.”_

_His lips quirk and he nods to show he’s heard her. Carefully, Ruby uncaps the tube and dabs gentle-smelling balm over the injury, secretly marveling at how Uncle Qrow doesn’t even flinch at the bite. The cut is really long and tapered at the end. It slices crooked across his cheekbone, like the red marks teachers make on graded tests._

_“Does it hurt?”_

_“Not so much anymore.”_

_“It looks bad, Uncle Qrow.”_

_His hand taps along the edge of the flask. “I know.”_

_It’s said shortly, words a tad blurred by whiskey, but Ruby bites her bottom lip and knows not to mention it again. She recognizes, in that deep instinctual way of children, when to let something lie._

_With a final dollop of balm, she sticks on the band aid, pinched between forefinger and thumb, little tongue sticking out in concentration._

_“There,” she says, and pecks his cheek for good measure, “All better.”_

_His smile is amused, and perhaps a shade softer._

_“Thanks, kiddo.”_

_Ruby beams back as he ruffles her hair. A surge of pride courses up in her, brimming at the surface. It doesn’t last._

_She blinks when his hand slows, caging the side of her temple against his weathered and clammy palm._

_“Uncle Qrow?”_

_The lamplight swathes only half of his face, leaving the rest shrouded. She can tell he’s staring at her though, taking in her nose and forehead and mouth, gazing into her eyes like it’s the first time he’s seeing them._

_“Gods,” he whispers, pained, “You really look just like her.”_

_“Like who?”_

_He doesn’t answer, simply sighing again._

_“Nothin’,” he says, and his voice sounds weird, kind of choked, “Just…I’m sorry.”_

_Ruby tilts her head, thinking hard about what Uncle Qrow could be referring to, but coming up with nothing. He doesn’t often say sorry and has always told her and Yang that you should never say sorry to anyone unless you really, really mean it._

_“Why are you sorry?”_

_Uncle Qrow is quiet again and his eyes aren’t really looking at her anymore, even though she’s right there._

_“Because,” he murmurs, “Because I was there. With her. And if I hadn’t been…I was such a damn idiot, thinking I could control it. It was my fault. Your whole world, kid, and I…I can’t bring it back to you.”_

_The words spill out like water from a busted pipe, hardly making sense. She’s never heard him like that before, or how his breath shudders at the end and his face pales into snow._

_Ruby doesn’t know what he’s talking about at all, but it makes her feel weird and ripped up inside and she doesn’t like it._

_“I don’t want the world,” she says, and touches his wrist, where the blood splashed out into stray spots, “I don’t want the world, Uncle Qrow.” Ruby worries her lip, wanting to make him feel better. He said it was his fault, but she doesn’t know what that could be._

_“Don’t be sad,” she says, “Momma…Momma use to say, you gotta throw bad stuff behind you and leave it there. Because it’ll just get heavier and heavier and you can’t carry it all forever.”_

_It was what she’d always said actually, whispered between them like a secret, and to be honest, Ruby still isn’t sure what she’d meant._

_Uncle Qrow seems to though, if his widened eyes are any indication. They stare at each other for a long minute, before he leans back, huffing a small, fond breath._

_“Yeah, she was always spouting inspirational stuff like that, wasn’t she? Let things go, fight for what’s right,” he looks at his stained hands, “Everyone’s worth saving.”_

_He shakes his head and chuckles, and maybe it would have sounded mocking, if Ruby couldn’t catch the marvel in it, the edge of something broken._

_“You must miss her, huh?” he says, “You and Yang. Coulda had a Summer Rose.”_

_His head is bent down, practically brushing with hers, their dark bangs tangling. She can smell the alcohol wicked on his breath and up this close, the pain in his eyes is vast and stark—a giant weight Ruby doesn’t know how to lift. The helplessness of it sends a terrible ache throughout her._

_Uncle Qrow watches the hot tears grow, shinning along the tips of her lashes. His mouth twists and he misunderstands and says, “I don’t mean to scare you.”_

_Ruby just leans forward and flings her arms around his neck, fingers screwing up balls of his collar. The blood makes his clothes stiff and scratchy. She buries her face into a shoulder and dampens it with tears._

_“I’m not scared,” she whispers, “I’ll never be scared.”_

_He doesn’t say anything. But after a long, long moment, he hugs her back._

_It’s full of angles and too tight and nearly hurts, but Ruby doesn’t let go._


	8. VIII

VIII.

~~~

Jaune sighs, shutting their room door as Nora snaps on the shower inside. Next to him, Ren re-attaches Storm Flower to his waist strap and digs another leaf out of his hair. They're both bedraggled, clothes splashed on and mud-smudged, shoes wet and caked in peat.

"I hope Nora doesn't take too long again," Ren murmurs, "She always uses up the hot water."

Jaune hums, nodding absently. "Yeah."

His gaze trails down the hall, lingering on the two sets of doors at the end, one of which Yang had managed to drag her father into an hour or so ago. They'd combed the woods for almost six hours without any sign of Ruby, before it'd finally gotten dark enough they had to give up.

"Do you think she's alright?" Ren asks, bringing him out of his reverie. His usually tranquil expression is furrowed, darkened by concern and pity. "Ruby, I mean."

Not even in the remotest sense. Jaune swipes hair back from his eyes and tries to rub the fatigue from them.

"I don't know."

The last time they'd seen each other keeps replaying in his head, how she'd been yelling about some kind of Grimm before vaulting over the wall. By the time he'd managed to clamber over to the other side, she was already gone.

Her scroll at least was still active and they know she's physically okay based on her aura reading—a recently installed precautionary feature after the attack on Beacon. But as to where she could be…

"You don't believe she's done anything drastic, do you?"

Jaune turns, incredulous, skin chilling all over. The image of Ruby's white face comes unbidden to mind, blood-flecked and eyes frightfully wide, expression naked with pain.

"W-What?" he clears his throat to get rid of the croak, "Of course not, why would she…what the hell are you talking about Ren?"

His teammate's eyes sink to the ground. "We were both at the hospital. We saw her, Jaune. You remember."

It's not a question, because of course Jaune does. He doesn't think he'll ever forget for the rest of his life, all the details fever-bright, flashing across his eyelids and his brain and his growing well of nightmares.

It had smelled of sweet decay, something resembling the putrefied flesh of overripe fruit. There was the thud of shoe soles on linoleum and the rattle of the stretcher as a team of nurses wheeled Qrow down the hallway, shouting that they couldn't get him to breathe. He'd been standing at the doorway next to Ruby, watching something smother out in her as doctors crowded over her uncle.

_Don't die,_ he remembers thinking at Qrow, _Goddamn it, please, don't die, you can't fucking die on her…_

But Qrow just had to piss him off one last time. Damn bastard who tracked them for months in the cold and dark to keep them safe from monsters, who stared at Jaune with the most tired, regretful, stupidly sad eyes he'd ever seen.

Jaune sucks in a breath and feels his chest twinge with the ache of remorse. And shame.

"You can take second shower," he says, peeling away, "I'm going to check on Yang."

~~~

In the end, he doesn't.

Yang slips from the room before he can knock, looking pallid and worn through.

"Hey," Jaune says, offering a wan smile that's just barely returned, "Your dad okay?"

Yang snorts humorlessly, collapsing on a hallway bench. "Finally got him to take a shower and lay down, so that's something."

It is. Jaune remembers losing his youngest sister once in a marketplace and all the desperate screaming and averted gazes that came in tow. It'd been fifteen minutes at most and yet they were the longest, most terrifying ones of his life. He can't even imagine what Taiyang could be thinking, but he can still recall the mounting panic in the whites of his eyes, the shivering hysteria creeping into his voice as time slogged ruthlessly on without any trace of Ruby.

He's certain the man would be out there even now if Yang hadn't persuaded him otherwise.

"You should get some rest too," he pushes gently, "We'll head out again tomorrow. Soon as it's light out. We'll find her."

Yang manages a lukewarm smile back at him. The corners of it almost remind him of Ruby.

"Who'd ever thought it'd end up like this, huh?" she mutters, "Seems like an age ago when we were all hanging around at the noodle stand or having those stupid food fights." She pauses, lips pursing tight for a moment, before she continues. "It's almost…like a different world now."

"Yang," Jaune turns to face her fully, brows set into a determined line, "We're going to find Ruby. We will. And she'll be fine. You know better than anyone how strong she is."

To this, there is only silence. For a long, endless beat, Yang stares through the hall window, where the stars and moon shimmer on the night's long curtain.

"Are you fascinated?"

Jaune tilts his head. "By what?"

"Her eyes."

He sputters, cheeks heating up as he spins at her for the seeming randomness of the question. She only smiles—it's knowing and a little sad and Jaune's flustered lips are parting to answer before he even has any idea of what the answer will be.

Yang doesn't get to hear it in the end either.

"Hey, you kids!"

Jaune's shoulders jump and Yang blinks. The innkeeper is calling from the stairwell. His face is an odd shade of puce, beaded with sweat and pinched with anxiety.

"Guards downstairs," he says, weathered hand gripping the railing, "Sent by the Council. Asking for that girl with the red cloak. Please hurry, I told you I didn't want trouble."

They cast flickering glances at each other and Jaune can catch the hard center in Yang's gaze as his own heart dips towards his knees.

The guardsmen are two giant, hulking men, who look more apt to be tearing helicopters out of the sky than sitting in the inn's quaint little sitting room. They sport matching scar-riddled frowns and appear no more thrilled to be there than Jaune and Yang were.

"You Ruby Rose?" the closer one grunts at Yang and the golden crest of Haven gleams on his shoulder.

"Her sister," Yang replies carefully, not even bothering to hide the suspicious edge, "Something you want?"

There's a momentary pause, during which the man stares down at Yang, gaze heavy and cold. It is met with triple the force and he eventually relents.

Crossing his beefy arms, and with no particular amount of concern, he says, "Gonna be hard to hear. We're part of Mistral's inner patrol, selected personally by Headmaster Lionheart to guard the kingdom against invasion."

Yang cocks a brow. "Well, aren't you boys special snowflakes? And what a great job so far too."

Jaune tries his best not to wince. The silent man glares daggers at her, while the other's scowl deepens, before he continues.

"You should know the Grimm attack this afternoon stirred up a big mess. Lot of Haven's students are pushing word along that Grimm numbers are getting out of control around here. Council wanted to shut them up, so we sent out two of our gate patrol to survey activity in the woods. Neither one came back."

"Bummer," Yang says, and maybe Jaune would have found it callous if Ren hadn't told him how Ruby had been treated at the gate today, "Is there a point?"

The man's eyes narrow.

"Approximately two hours ago, we managed to locate them," he says, "…Or whatever remained of them anyway."

Jaune blinks, though he cannot honestly say he's surprised. In the month they've been here, he's seen enough to believe how large the Grimm could grow, here in this tarnished city of gold—an ever-lasting source of nourishment. He isn't surprised. It is the indifference that he feels though, that will take him a while to admit, even to himself.

For a beat, Yang is quiet.

"What does this have to do with Ruby?" she says, "What are you implying?"

A glimpse of blood and fire flashes in her eyes. The air grows heavy and thickens, stretching tight like a live thing. The weight of his skin presses flat against his bones and in the two men's eyes, Jaune sees for the first time something like caution. Hostility.

To his credit, the man's voice remains flat.

"Exactly what you think."

He gestures at his partner, who slips a hand into his belt.

"We found this draped over one of the bodies," he says, and the cloak swings loose, fluttering to the floor.

Ripped. Stained.

Red as anything can be.

"I said this would be hard to hear," the man watches them, "Now, tell us where she is."

~~~

They lie.

Or at least they technically do. Jaune thinks of Ruby's smile and her laugh and the baking flour she'd sometimes gotten in her hair. He thinks of the deep human pain of her eyes.

He can't reconcile any of it. Not with that cloak, browned at the corners with another's blood.

"We'll be in touch," Lionheart's men say, "We're trusting you'll do the same if you find her first. The Headmaster is eager to have this resolved as well."

Jaune doesn't have a clue what that could mean, but he shuts the door in their faces without bothering to ask. The room is quiet enough to hear the minute groans of the roof beams.

When the innkeeper accosts Jaune with anxious questions, Yang turns around wordlessly and goes back up the stairs.

He knows better than to follow. For who knows how long, he sits on the lobby bench, rewinding over and over in his head those last few minutes he'd seen Ruby. He studied every emotion he remembered flickering across her face, trying to understand how it could have led to this. How it could possibly be true.

There was alarm, he remembered. And worry. And the cold, determined focus of a huntress.

His brow furrows.

_Something…had been at the top of the wall._

Jaune jolts awake from his half-torpor as he hears footsteps clip down the hallway. He stands, ignoring the ache in his spine as he hurries around the corner.

The tip of Yang's blonde hair is just disappearing into her room and Jaune hesitates for a moment, before deciding he'd risk the intrusion.

"Yang?" he murmurs, peeking his head in. The room is dim, warmed by a soft lamplight. He can make out Taiyang's form beneath the covers of one of the beds, breathing rhythmically in slumber, while Yang's tall, coiled shadow sits on the end of the other.

"Fuck Mistral, Jaune," she mutters, without looking up. Jaune steps in, closing the door.

"There has to have been a mistake," he says, "We'll find Ruby and figure out what happened."

Her face tightens and he can see the glint of her scroll when her hand shifts, all the unanswered calls listed off the side.

"Where the heck did she go?" she murmurs, and it sounds sad, with a thread of panic that is not so plain as her father's, but evident all the same.

"We'll find her," Jaune promises again.

Yang doesn't answer. Her tired eyes seem drawn to the red cloak, folded gently on a nearby chair.

"She left it behind."

Jaune's own gaze drifts to the cloak.

"It could've been unwillingly." Of course it wasn't. They've both checked their scrolls and know Ruby's aura status remains the same. He isn't sure why he bothers speculating otherwise, besides the need to offer some modicum of an explanation. "She could've been forced to. As a distraction or something. Those Grimm today are probably pouring back into the forest."

"No," Yang says, quietly, "That doesn't make sense."

"I know it isn't a pleasant thought, but—"

"He made that for her."

Jaune stills. He watches Yang hang her head, golden locks spilling over her shoulders.

"She ever tell you? Why she wears it all the time?"

He shakes his head.

Yang looks toward the moon. "It was fourteen months after what happened to Summer," she says, "Uncle Qrow was getting ready to leave. He had stayed with us for almost three years by that point. It was the longest I ever remembered him being there. Strange things were going on around Patch. Stuff breaking or catching on fire in the house. Hail storms in spring and constant blackouts. He was growing paranoid. Afraid. He said he couldn't stay."

A faint smile ghosts her lips.

"You know he told me about his semblance once. He was drunk and I don't think he ever meant to, so I didn't bring it up again, but…that was why he left. He blamed himself for all those things, even though we never…" The smile fades, into something tinged with an old and long sadness.

"Ruby couldn't let him go. She was so attached by then that the idea of him leaving her didn't even seem possible. She threw some of the most insane tantrums and had a lot of nightmares. We didn't know what to do."

Yang sighs, and gives him a wry, defeated look that has Jaune's own lips twitching. Oddly, he can imagine it all perfectly. A tiny, fierce-eyed Ruby, fighting for what was hers even then.

"She really loved him, didn't she?"

"Yeah," Yang says, eyes soft, "And in the end, he was the only one who could help her to understand. I'm still not entirely sure what he said to her, but one night I could hear them, faintly through the keyhole. He was telling her a story. Something new that she'd never heard before. About gods and men and lives moving from dust to dust."

Jaune's eyes widen. Hair prickles inexplicably along his arms.

"The next day, he gave her the cloak. Just like the one Summer had worn, only red. Redder than anything. He'd made it by hand…all the stitches and seams," Yang pauses and Jaune pretends not to hear the slight catch in her voice.

The days at Beacon ripple through his mind and it make sense suddenly—why Ruby never went anywhere without her cloak, why she still hung onto it when it grew tattered and frayed. His heart squeezes like a vice. Jaune knows his pity isn't needed, but his entire being feels nearly aflame with the pain of it anyway.

"Qrow left not soon after that. Ruby still cried and tried to convince him not to, but in the end she accepted it. In some way, I think she realized what he was trying to tell her."

Yang sighs again, deeper and heavier than before. She glances at her sleeping father and runs her flesh hand gently through his hair.

"Do you get it now, Jaune? She _wouldn't_ have left it behind. Never. Not that. I just don't understand."

~~~

He spends the next few hours with Yang trying to work out Ruby's possible location and then helping her calm down Taiyang when he wakes up in a raving panic.

It's well past midnight by the time he trudges back into the corridor, torn between exhaustion and restlessness. Someone, Ren most likely, has left a lantern at the staircase for him, throwing orange flecks of light across the floor. Jaune picks it up gratefully, and starts the slow trek back to his own rooms on the inn's other side.

He thinks he imagines the sound at first as he passes by Ruby's room. A quiet shuffle and 'clack' from inside, followed by a rocking creak that could've easily been from a million and one different things. Jaune will never know what strange impulse snatches him up and draws his hand to the doorknob. Only that it does.

She is standing on the windowsill, a ropey figure of shadows and hair that's half turned away, one foot on the outer ledge. Jaune doesn't need her to turn around. He doesn't even dare to breathe.

The door shuts with a muffled 'click.'

"…Ruby?"

Her eyes match the silver sheen of a knife's blade, as she whips around, startled. They stare at each other for a long, long moment. Then the shock drains away, shuttered off like light from a darkened room.

"Jaune," she says, "You shouldn't be here."

That is all.

"What are you talking about?" he takes a step forward, nearly fumbling, "Why—Where have you _been_? We spent hours looking for you, how—" He pauses, shaking his head. "No, never mind, it doesn't matter. Come on, let's go, your dad's been freaking out and Yang's crazy worried too. We've gotta let them know you're okay."

He offers his hand to help her down. She just looks at it.

"I can't."

Somewhere, in the pit of Jaune's stomach, an icy ball of dread begins to form. Something is wrong.

"Yes, you can," he says, begs really, "Please, Ruby, whatever happened we can deal with it. Just don't go. We can work it out together. Isn't that what you always said? That we had to stick together?"

He thinks something flickers in her expression—as if a single fissure across looking glass.

"You don't understand. This is something I need to do alone." She turns slightly and then Jaune sees, through the pale cast of moonlight, the ripped hem of her skirt, the blooming stains of blood across her shirt. A dark crimson splatter flakes from the side of her bone-white face.

Time and space move sluggishly around them, as if dying trickles in an ancient lakebed.

"Two of Lionheart's men came earlier," he blurts, "They're looking for you. They…They say you killed someone." His teeth clench and he looks hard and desperately at her, expression struggling not to break apart.

"It's not true, right?"

The silence is so long, so sudden. And after what seems forever, Ruby's eyes shift back to him.

"It is."

Her voice is terribly, frighteningly soft. "He was dying and in such horrible pain. The Grimm were coming. I could tell you I had no choice and wanted to end his suffering but…"

She looked at her arms and that's when Jaune notices she's actually holding something. A box of some sort.

"…on the inside, I know it wasn't out of mercy." The edge of her lips, pale and purple-tinged from the chill, curves into a smile. It is as lightless as a tree's hollow, and twice as empty.

"No matter what he said to me, that man was innocent. And for the sake of my own desires, some part of me decided he had to die. I'm not a good person, Jaune. I don't deserve anything, and yet…" Her eyes regard him, glittering and alien.

And then Jaune recognizes the box in her arms. The lip of a flask and the long folded hilt of a greatsword. The maroon cape, lying folded over the side.

The world grinds to an abrupt and echoing halt. Cold sweat glides down Jaune's neck and temples. His heart pounds like a war drum in his ears.

"Ruby…" he whispers, eyes locked on the box, "What are you trying to do?"

She turns to the sky.

"Just stay away from me," she says, quietly, "Please. And tell my dad and Yang I'm sorry."

"You have to think about this."

"There's nothing to think about."

"Whatever you've been promised is a lie."

"…I don't know what you mean."

"Ruby," Jaune's fingers twist into white-knuckled fists, "You can't bring him back. You can't—he's gon—"

" _No._ "

She is looking at him, eyes glowing white-hot with light. The shadow of something swims across their shimmering surface, large and wide, stretching on and forever. Something like hands. Or wings. The glass of the window splinters and the air seems to compress against his lungs. Jaune stands there, frozen, legs chained to the spot. He's afraid, he registers faintly. He's afraid of Ruby.

But then, an instant later, her features contort and she falters, mouth pulling into a pained grimace. One hand reaches up to hold her temple, fingers gripping a section of hair. She blinks twice hard and breathes out a single shivery breath.

And when she finally looks at Jaune again, the light has receded, as if a deep and powerful tide being pulled back to sea.

"You're wrong, Jaune," she whispers, holding the items close, "You're wrong. I'm going to save my uncle."

She doesn't let him say any more.

Within the breath of a word, Ruby is gone, a scattering of petals in her wake.

~~~

_"You know what wearing this means right?" he had asked, fixing her hood, "You're a proper hero now. Just like your mom."_

_Ruby blinked, peering up at him with marveling eyes. "Really?"_

_Uncle Qrow chuckled. It's gentle and the hand he rested on her head was warm._

_"Of course, kid, every respectable one needs a killer outfit right?" He mussed her hair at the serious nod, summoning giggles. "But you know, that's not all there is to it. The most important part about being a hero is that they always try their best to be strong. They keep going and stay brave, even if unfamiliar or scary things happen. They don't look back, no matter what's been left behind."_

_He brushed the bangs away from her face. She will remember the mystery in his smile. The sadness._

_"You understand that, don't you?"_

~~~

The night wind lashes across her back like a whip—a foreign sensation that makes her skin shudder. Without the fluttering weight of the cloak trailing behind her, Ruby's whole body seems off-balance. She feels altogether broken and barren, stinking of a dying man's blood. She isn't a hero, Ruby realizes.

And she supposes she hadn't understood much in the end after all.


	9. IX

"Why are you helping me?"

Raven turns, expecting to see Oscar's large, timid eyes blinking up at her. Instead, what she looks into are two ancient and bottomless pools, reflecting only secrets and hapless delusions. They are tired and that makes the sneer draw sharp across her face. What right does Ozpin have to be tired?

"I'm not," she says, "Salem is suspicious of your death. Should she learn of your new incarnation, she would be tearing Anima apart searching for you. It's hardly in the tribe's best interest to let that happen."

He stares at her, in the same light that's always made her hackles rise. She'll never grow hardened to that stare, despite all the time gone. It will always feel as if he can see past her words and pierce right through into the truth of things.

"About Qrow…I truly am sorry."

And he does sound sorry. Sorrier than any time she can even remember, but the words drift meaninglessly through her ears. If he were truly so remorseful, he would've said something back then, when she was screaming herself hoarse, eyes swollen with tears, demanding ( _begging_ ) Qrow to return with her. He would've convinced him to go.

Ozpin is sorry. But not in the way Raven had wanted him to be.

Her jaw clenches, heart thundering with fury and pain.

"It doesn't matter," she says, "The past is the past."

"Then why am I here?" Ozpin presses softly.

Raven stares daggers at him. She turns back to the muddy road, stretching through into the deep heart of the mountains where the Branwen tribe has made camp. There, the boy would be safe, at least until Raven could get into contact with Shade's headmaster. She'd deliver Ozpin to Vacuo and then…cut all ties once and for all. With Ozpin. With Vale. An old man with dust for dreams and the kingdom her team would never return to.

"You're here, because I want to let this go," she tells him, "I want to be free."

It's selfish. She can hear Qrow's disappointment even now. _Even now._

But Ozpin's expression is wiped clean of judgment or reproach. He studies her as if she is something to be pitied, as if she is the one trapped in the body of a small, fragile child, shackled to the whims of titans.

"You know he really did try to hate you."

Her best effort aside, Raven can't hide the flinch. Not from the calm, hazel gaze that casts over her.

"He tried. After the years had passed and he realized you were never coming back. He always told me things would've been easier that way. If he could just hate you," There's gentleness in Ozpin's words now, "But I don't think he ever managed it."

Raven is silent. Her chest is heaving slightly, but it still feels as if she can't get enough air.

"I wish we had never met you," she says, hushed, spitefully and pointlessly because their paths would've crossed regardless. Because though they had arrived into the blood and fire of this world together, Qrow had always had that smidge of softness in him that Raven lacked. That weakness which, once shown the rosy hues of a perfect world, would not have let him turn away again.

But Ozpin doesn't say any of this. His gaze is something approaching sorrow. "I don't begrudge you your anger," he says, "It isn't fair, I know. But Salem cannot win. She cannot be allowed to win, whatever the price may be."

Raven shakes her head, face bloodless.

"It wasn't Salem that sent my brother to his death," she clenches her hands, wishing not for the first time to have them around Ozpin's throat instead—no matter how young it is now.

"It was you."

~~~

 _I need the pieces of him,_ it had said, _Wait for nightfall and bring them to me._

Ruby curls up on one of the flat rocks sunken into the glade, white hands hugging her bruised knees. The box with Qrow's belongings sits beneath her, the cape wavering in the languid forest draft. She's rubbed off the blood flecks across her cheek, but the spot is still sticky somewhere down in the bone. Perhaps it always will be.

_(she's never killed anyone before)_

The image of the guard's bloodied face dogs her, his tear-stained and petrified eyes. Ruby wonders if he'd felt any pain at the end, if she'd perhaps misaimed or jerked the barrel and he'd died in agony anyway. She torments herself with the question of it.

In the distance, somewhere in the murky depths of the forest, beowolves howl. Ruby forces herself to breathe, resting her forehead against her knees.

He'd begged her to help him. The man who had laughed in her face and looked upon the outer villagers of Mistral like they were so much trash. He said he didn't want to die, but Ruby could do nothing in the end but grant death regardless.

Her knuckles whiten against the rim of her skirt.

She is sorry for what was done. Her stomach keeps rolling and twisting with the remorse of it, even though she's already vomited twice before making her way to the inn. She is sorry and she hadn't wanted to, and yet after all was said and done she had let the Grimm live.

That monster that had torn those men apart, that has probably been tearing men apart for quite some time now. She let it live, because…

Because…

Jaune's face flashes before her, his features pale and open, racked with something resembling fear. As if he didn't recognize what he was seeing.

_Ruby, what are you trying to do?_

She sighs, a hand gripping her temple where the headache still needled.

"I don't know," she whispers, "I don't know anymore."

It's beginning to seem like a wonder she ever had.

_Such needless anguish._

The sudden voice has her leaping for Crescent Rose and snapping to her feet. For a wild second, her eyes dart across the shadowed ring of trees, before she registers the familiar ice of the voice.

_You are after what you want. There is nothing simpler to understand than that._

A twig crunches behind her.

The Grimm steps into the moonlit glade, a spindly black skeleton staggering through the pallid grass. Ruby's heart begins to pound. She doesn't lower her weapon. The Grimm makes no move to come closer, but its voice shudders through her skull.

_I am the only one who can recover what you've lost._

Ruby's mouth purses. Her brain quakes with suspicion and disgust and the endless loop of a thought that it's a Grimm— _a Grimm_ —kill it, kill it now.

_Do you doubt me?_

It tilts its head, yellow slits appearing across the ivory mask. The eyes skewer her, pupil-less and clinical. Do you have regrets?

It takes a step forward and Ruby forces herself to hold her stance and not recoil.

_Is it about that man? You should have let me eat him if you could not stomach the thought of killing._

"Shut up," Ruby says, suddenly, harshly and a lance of pain streaks through the points behind her eyes. She cringes, barely crushing the urge to cry out and cradle her face. An icicle of fear stabs into her chest as the long, endless hum begins to rise in her mind again.

The pain has grown steadily worse. She still isn't sure exactly what's happening to her, only that it's terrible and powerful, that it hurts not only her, but everyone around her.

_The Eyes._

Ruby looks up. The creature has backed away, half-pivoted in retreat and visibly hunched.

 _Can it really be? But how…?_ It hisses, more to itself than anything. Then its own eyes open, searing orbs of yellow-orange that cannot seem to meet her gaze.

 _Watch yourself, girl,_ it says, _Stop looking at me._

Its voice is sharp and cold, but lodged at the center is a disquieting sense of fear. Ruby stares, and finally, reaches upwards to cage an eye behind her fingers. It comes back to her like an old dream—the days following Beacon's fall, sunlight sifting through the drapes, Uncle Qrow lounging on a chair at her bedside with a crooked, tired smile.

The lump forms, instant and hard in her throat and Ruby has to force her breaths around it.

"Silver Eyes…" she rasps, to the air, to nothing at all, and then she bears down upon the Grimm, who hisses with hostility, "You're not going to mention those men again, got that?"

The Grimm's black lips peel into a ragged sneer.

_It is merely the truth._

"I don't care," Ruby whispers and her eyes throb, while the Grimm cringes away as if burnt, "I'll make you sorry."

A low growl reverbrates through her skull, rattling her brain. It's an alien sound, not unlike the curdling, human-like wails of the Nuckelavee.

_You should show some caution yourself. Do not forget. We made a deal. Do you not wish to see your uncle again?_

Ruby's teeth clench, ice slicking up the sides of her heart.

It takes a long moment, before she can bring her lips to move. "I do," she croaks, "I _do_. More than anything, but…a thing like you…how can a thing like you bring him back to me?"

The forest seems to grow, the dark, gnarled columns of the trees stretching to blot out the stars. Lumbering clouds slide over the moon, swallowing it and a black coldness pervades the glade.

 _So,_ the Grimm says, suddenly calm, suddenly amused, _You are starting to have doubts._

Its head rotates to the box, glowing gaze skimming across the flask and sword hilt and cape. For a second, Ruby thinks she sees a crackle rise and course through them. Then the Grimm's hand raises, palm flat, rotted joints and tendons popping.

Well done, the remnants of his aura are strong here. Its lips curve and open, a gaping, abysmal grin, Watch then, flower child. And after, tell me again if you doubt me.

There's a pulse, something beating in the sightless darkness, which Ruby can feel clinging and hot against her skin. An acrid stench wafts up her nose and she coughs, clutching her throat.

"Wha—" she gasps, "What do you think you're—"

_Over there._

A long, creaking finger raises, pointing to its left, where the glade slopes upwards into a rough and scrubby incline. Ruby looks before she can think to stop herself. Shadows dance amongst the rustling bushes, all shapeless and strange. There is a moment where they're all Ruby can make out, before the clouds sluice pass and reveal the moon.

The minute disappearance seems to have made it swell, a crumbling disc of white that beams down upon the hill. It bathes all of the grass in paleness, the bushes and trees as well. The whole forest recedes, drawing back branches and leaves, and Ruby sees nothing, nothing.

Until she does.

There at the peak, standing amongst the brush. The cold lunar light outlines his body and the face is swathed in shadow, but she recognizes the arms, the legs, the long, deft hands.

Sound rushes out of her world, just as the breath from her lungs, coming out all at once as the single despairing whimper of a child.

A little girl flashes through her mind, hugging herself close, standing alone in the snow. Her head raises, eyes streaming out wings of light.

_…Uncle Qrow?_

Ruby is running. She forgets even to use her Semblance and pounds up the muddy hill to the clatter of her boots.

She thinks she might have said his name again, slipped between each hoarse, hysterical breath of hope, but has no idea either way. The silhouette is silent, but the head turns and the hair is slicked back like his hair was and the shoulders are broad just like his shoulders were and it's him, it has to be, it's _real_ —

 _You didn't say goodbye!_ Part of her wants to scream. _You never even said goodbye!_

She's closer now, only thirty or so feet away and her hand stretches out. She wants to hit him and sob like a baby, wants to hug him and remember home and never let go.

"RUBY, STOP!"

A blur explodes from the trees. She catches a glimpse of gold and sea-blue, white metal shining in her vision. Jaune bursts forth in a rush of sizzling power, Crocea Mors raised high, the sheen of its blade deadly and beautiful. He swings with a yell, the thunderous arc dazzling, with more strength than Ruby has ever seen him put into it.

The sword splits into Uncle Qrow and the shape of him collapses instantly. Black mist dissolves his body, dispersing it into the wind and Ruby thinks she might have screamed then too.

"Wait!" she flies forward, trying to grab at whatever she could hold, "No, wait _please_!"

But it's too late and he's gone. Gone, gone, gone again. Ruby whips around wildly, ripping Crescent Rose right out of its strap. The Grimm—she'll make it bring him back no matter what she has to do.

A snarl breaks through the burning spiral of her thoughts.

 _Miserable boy!_ The Grimm's mouth sneers, eyes wide, nearly bulging out from the mask. Jaune had not missed a beat, charging at the Grimm with his weapon clenched in his hand. Clods of earth and dead leaves are flung up from the weight of his feet.

" _Go back to hell!_ " Jaune roars and stabs forward. Within the fraction of a second, lying in the space between one motion and the next, the Grimm looks toward Ruby.

_The old Haven lab. Come and he will be waiting._

And then it scatters into smoke just as Crocea Mors pierces through, cutting apart the thickened air in a violent slice. An inky cloud twists and spins into the sky, pulling away into the distance.

And for a moment, a skeletal figure can be seen in the smoke, grinning, a box gripped in its hand with a tattered cape winding down the side.

~~~

Jaune curses hideously as the Grimm vanishes from sight. Squinting, he tries in vain to catch which direction the cloud has flown towards, before giving up with another swear. His mind reels with shock and the lightning pump of adrenaline, barely able to make sense of what he'd just seen. There'd never been Grimm like that before in Vale—its grotesque limbs and appearance harkening unpleasantly back to the Nuckelavee. Not for the first time, he regrets not having at least done Professor Port's readings, given the uselessness of his lectures.

Then again, with how mutated the Grimm were near Mistral, he wasn't sure the professor would've had an ID on it either. Potent shivers run down Jaune's spine at the thought, and he wonders what Ruby could have been doing with that monster, because he'd never imagined after trailing her into the forest that she'd be with anything like—

Ruby! Jaune's eyes widen and he spins around, just in time to see the first rose petal fall.

"Hey, stop!" He yells, and with the absolute refusal of being left behind again, touches Ruby's shoulder.

The force with which she shoves him off is blunt and surprisingly hard. She's glaring at him with shimmering eyes that can almost be mistaken for tears, if not for how unnervingly bright they are.

"I told you to stay away!" she snaps, "Why are you _here_? You ruined everything!"

Jaune's mouth works soundlessly for a beat, before he frowns.

"Why am I here? Because I'm freaking worried! You showed up at the inn covered in blood, didn't say a word to your dad and sister, and then tore off into the woods to hang around with some—some kind of Baba Yaga Grimm! Why the heck are _you_ here?"

"Because I don't have a choice!" Ruby yells, cheeks flushed against the rest of her bone-white face, "You don't understand. I need it. It's the only thing that can bring Uncle Qrow back, I saw him, you saw him too, he was _there,_ I—"

"That wasn't him."

There is a sudden beat of silence, in which Jaune sucks in a sharp breath that is half frustration and half terror. For a moment, Ruby just stares at Jaune, something flickering and fragile in her expression, before she shakes her head hard.

"Yes, it was."

"No," Jaune tries to keep his voice gentle, "Ruby, it couldn't have been."

But her face is shuttering closed, pretty features twisting in desperation and denial and something akin to frank hatred.

"What do you know?" she says, "You hated him. You said all those horrible things to him."

Jaune nearly winces at the barbed words, before steeling himself. He knows she doesn't mean it, that her words aren't from her, but the mess of hurt and grief writhing in her heart. He knows this, even if that doesn't make the guilt any less biting. He'll never be able to take back what he said to Qrow, but he has a feeling the man wouldn't have cared anyway.

_You want me to forgive you? Go save my niece. Don't let her cling to these ideas. It's damn heartbreaking, y'know? And foolish._

It's as if he can really hear him. Jaune's teeth clench, stance hardening, and he reaches out as Ruby tries to rush past him again.

"I'm sorry," his hands grip her shoulders, hard enough to hurt, "But Ruby, you need to face this. Qrow is _gone._ You can't keep denying it."

"What are you talking about?" she pulls back, voice cracking as she tries to push him away, "I'm not! Let me go! Just leave me alone!"

Jaune's hold only tightens. "You _are._ I can see it. You're trying, but some small part of you still thinks you can save him."

She pales and stammers. A deer in headlights. A seed of hope exposed to the frost. "S-Stop it, no I don't."

"Yes, you _do_ , Ruby. There's no way that could have been him and we both know it. You gotta admit that."

"You don't know what you're talking about! Just let me go, Jaune!"

"No way. Not until I know you understand."

"Understand _what?_ I said let me go!"

"He's not coming back, Ruby."

"Please, stop—I-I don't—!"

"He's _never_ coming back."

"S-Stop it, please—"

"Ruby—"

"— _Please_ —'

"—he's—"

"—nonono—"

"— _dead._ "

" _NO!_ "

The first and only thing Jaune can register is light. Blinding white light in the shape of wings.

And then he's knocked clean off his feet, thrown backwards at least a hundred paces, and only halted by the wide trunk of an old ash tree. Oxygen is ripped instantly from his lungs as he slams hard into the wood. Stars crackle across his vision and he thinks he feels the harsh and sudden twinge of his aura shattering. In hindsight, if it hadn't been for his armor, he probably would've broken a bone or two as well.

Utterly winded, it takes Jaune a minute just to struggle into a sitting position. He expects Ruby to already be gone, but she's still there, frozen, hands clutched close to her chest, eyes wide and glowing and crumpled with tears.

"He promised me," she whispers, "My stupid, lying uncle…he said we'd always be together. He promised me. It's not right, Jaune. It's not _fair._ I don't know how to let him be gone."

Then she turns away and in a scream of wind and light, disappears.


	10. X.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is now in sight! I'm estimating about two or three more chapters left. Thanks to everyone who's either followed or left kudos, and especially to those who commented. Please know that I do read (and plan to reply) to each one and take whatever concrit you have into consideration. Any encouragement in general does wonders for the self-motivation as well of course!

**X.**

~~~

Dawn is breaking when Jaune reaches the inn again. Yang, both hands latched to her father's sleeve to keep him from charging out without so much as a bite of food in sixteen hours, barely realizes he's been gone before he's crashing back into the lobby.

"I found her!" Jaune gasps, bowing over to clutch his knees. His jeans and boots are stained with mud and his pale face trickles with sweat. Crocea Mors hangs loose and half-buckled at his side.

Brief pandemonium reigns as Nora and Ren fire questions immediately at him about where he was and what the hell happened. Taiyang overpowers them to ask about Ruby, and soon Yang is forced to insert herself between Jaune and the rest of them to regain any order. God knows what kind of mess they're in that _she's_ the one trying to keep a cool head.

Raising her hands, Yang halts their advance with a furrowed brow. "Okay, stop, stop. Give him a second, guys."

"N-No," Jaune lifts his head, finally regaining his breath, "No time." In a rush of stumbles and stammers and in clear disbelief himself, Jaune explains to Yang where her little sister has gone. By the end, Yang is the one who can't seem to breathe.

Nora shakes her head, looking pale. "Hold on, I-I don't get it. Ruby's working with a Grimm now? That can't be—"

"No," Jaune cuts in, almost harshly, "She's not _working_ with it, she—look, I'm not a hundred percent clear on the details, but i-it's manipulating her somehow. It wanted that box of Qrow's things. Ruby came here for it last night."

"Qrow's—what the heck does that mean? What does it want with that? Or Ruby?"

"I don't know!"

Yang's stomach is dipping somewhere towards her knees. Nothing is making sense. An empty ironic little part of her notes that this would have been the exact type of thing she would've called Qrow for help on. He'd always known what to do during these shit situations.

Feeling her throat start to close up, Yang forces the thoughts away, though not before her heart squeezes one final time. She can't think about that now.

"Well it has to be after _something,_ " Nora says, face twisted in confusion.

Ren puts a cooling hand on her shoulder, before speaking, voice calm and grave.

"Nora's right. The first thing we should do is get some answers on its motive. Perhaps another visit to Haven is in order," his gaze shifts, staring directly into Yang's, "If I recall, Professor Lionheart had…similar interest in Qrow's personal effects."

Yang's eyes widen, the memory hitting her in a cruel flash of light. In the chaos and panic, she'd almost forgotten what happened at Haven. How could she have forgotten?

Nora laughs, a mostly forced sound.

"Whoa, you don't have to put it like that, Ren. Making it sound like—"

"—he was after the same thing," says Jaune, eyes narrowed, and then the words hang there between them all, ugly and black and terrifying.

Yang registers faintly that this is all so completely beyond their league. Only it pales in comparison to the thought that whatever Haven's so-called headmaster is looking for, it has to do with Qrow and Ruby—one piece of her family she can't save anymore and another that she can. She will.

"Let's go."

All faces turn to her. Yang's hands ball into fists, making the metal of her fingers creak.

"Let's _go,_ " she says again and feels the flames gathering, the rage awakening, "I've got a few questions for that old man."

Jaune and Ren nod immediately, faces hardened with determination and suspicion in turn. Nora's more hesitant, puzzled and worried, but follows Ren's lead eventually and nods as well. With an actual direction to pursue, Yang's about to tear out of the inn, raining fire and brimstone on her path to Haven when her father speaks for the first time.

"Wait."

It is the last thing Yang plans to do, but the tone of his voice ensures she does. They all do, halting with the instant obedience of startled children. With a growl, Yang twists around, glaring incredulously at her father.

"What? Why?" she grits her teeth, "We finally have a lead and _now_ you wanna wait?"

Taiyang completely ignores her, his eyes planted solely on Jaune, who tries not to fidget in confusion and anxiety.

"What did you say to my daughter?"

Four pairs of eyes widen. Jaune begins stammering out something incoherent and Yang barely resists throwing her hands in the air.

"Dad, what the hell are you—"

"Ruby's mentioned you before, Jaune," Taiyang continues, almost conversationally, "In her calls back when Beacon was still open. She's real fond of you."

Jaune makes a strange squeaking noise, which Nora parrots as a squawk. Ren is staring blankly and Yang can barely believe what's even going on in front of her. Taiyang isn't perturbed however, still weirdly and eerily calm.

"And I've seen how you handle things. With your team and otherwise. You're not afraid to take charge or make decisions. You care. A lot even, almost as much as she does, and if it's not a personal matter, you can also keep a cool head." He uncrosses his arms, still staring at Jaune, who's expression falters between mortification and nervousness.

"She would've listened to you. For all intents and purposes, she should have. But you lost control. You said something else to her. Something she wasn't ready for."

Simultaneously, Ren and Nora open their mouths in defense of their leader. Yang beats them to it.

"Dad, enough!" she snaps, "Are you seriously giving him the third degree right now? This isn't the time to be—"

"I'm sorry."

Silence shudders through the room as Jaune clenches his hands, both hanging in loose fists at his side. They turn to him, but he isn't meeting their gazes, too busy staring at the ground with a searing focus, with an intensity almost equal to the gaze Yang is now drilling into his forehead.

Meekly, Nora ventures, "Jaune?"

His lips flatten, tightening for a moment, before sighing.

"She was just…so convinced that what she saw was Qrow. The way she looked, all that hope—I was scared. I didn't know how to make her stay or understand," The fists at his side curl, "I panicked and told her…I told her Qrow couldn't have been that thing. That there was no way, because…because he's dead and he was always going to be dead. Because he's never coming back."

Nora and Ren gasp faintly, but it sounds to Yang like it's coming from somewhere far away. Fire licks the edges of her vision. White hot rage coills in her chest, winding slowly around and around. She thinks of her little sister out there somewhere. Alone. Crying. Chasing all the shadows that seem the ragged ends of their uncle's cape.

Yang needs to break something.

_"Jaune, you—"_

"He's right."

She freezes, hands mid-air towards Jaune's collar. Piercing red eyes snap over her shoulder, burning into the center of her father's tired face.

"He's right," says Taiyang again, softly, brows knitted and sad, "Qrow's….he's dead, Yang. He's gone. It's only the truth."

Her chest twists again, something jerking hard at the words. _Gone._

_Gone._

_Gone._

Dead.

They roar in her ears and she remembers Qrow's hand mussing up her hair and his grin and how he always reassured her that she was nothing, _nothing_ like Raven and never had to be. There is a single pounding moment, where Yang almost wants to deny it all herself. But then it's over just as suddenly, the burning pain of it, leaving only a numb acceptance behind.

Jaune's guilt-ridden face blurs in her sight—tears she hadn't even noticed, hadn't even felt.

"I know that," Yang whispers, and lets them stream down her face, "I _know_ that already, but Ruby's just—she's just a kid, Dad, she never—"

"You're not much older yourself," Taiyang says softly, "And she's the one who needs to let him go most of all. Not only for her own sake, but everyone's."

Her father sighs, dragging a hand through his hair.

"Damn it, I was really hoping that…" he shakes his head, trailing off, "Just hold on a minute, okay? Don't go knocking on Lionheart's door just yet. Let me tell you the rest of the legend first."

"What legend?"

It clicks a half second after she asks, settling cold and heavy in the pit of her stomach. Her father looks so very sad.

"The one about special little girls," he says, "And their silver eyes."

~~~

_"You should know that I'm not sure on the details myself," Summer says one night, voice floating through the dimness of their second-year dorm._

_Taiyang stares at the ceiling and the mattress groans as Raven turns in the bed beneath him. Qrow is so silent that they can't even hear him breathe. Summer continues._

_"Professor Oz said that they work by vaporizing aura, absorbing certain pieces vital to the body's maintainence. The target then won't be able to function naturally and becomes petrified."_

_A laugh, quiet and mirthless._

_"It does have a bit of a nasty ring to it."_

_They don't respond, full of pity and fascination and fear. Their tiny leader, with bangs that fall in her face and nose always buried in a book, is a figure straight out of myth. A warrior from the oldest of times, with battle written into her genes, stirring up in her blood. They cannot begin imagining the things she could be capable of._

_"But I learned something else too, which the professor didn't know."_

_Spring wind breathes through the open window, sifting the curtains._

_"I told you already didn't I? About how the Eyes are awakened by some huge, unchangeable occurrence in the holder's life." They don't need to look over to know her gaze has rested upon the dresser, where the framed photo of her parents sits._

_"Well, once awakened, the Silver Eyes manifest their own form. A singular entity residing in the nexus of the holder's mind."_

_"What are you saying, Rose?" Qrow suddenly asks, gravel in the dark, "That you've got this giant pair of eyes floatin' around in your dreams?"_

_He means to sound blasé, but the concern worms through easily. Summer makes a small, amused sound. Fondness softens her voice when she replies._

_"Something like that. It is alive in its own way. But the only consciousness it has, the only things it feels are my most primal emotions, the ones that brought it into being in the first place."_

_"But that's—" Qrow stops, swallowing something that sounds like horror. Or rage. "…Does it ever go away?"_

_"It ebbs and flows depending on how I'm feeling, but…no, not really. Once it's awake, it's awake. All I can do is keep training and try my best to control it."_

_She pauses and the silence presses down in her place. She never asks, 'are you afraid?' and perhaps it is better that way. A minute passes and finally it is Qrow who dares to reach across the chasm again. With Summer, he always will._

_"What do you see then?" he asks, "What ghost comes for you, Rose?"_

_It takes her a moment to answer, but eventually she does. She always will answer, when they ask questions in the future too. They won't understand until much later, how much courage it took._

_"A memory. When I was eight, my parents agreed to take me sailing along the coast of Vale. I can see them getting the boat ready, with me on the dock to keep from getting underfoot. A fog is rolling in, thick and cold. Soon I can't see them anymore. Scared, I call out, asking if they're still there. Asking them not to forget me. I can't bring myself to move and so I call out again and again. They never answer back."_

_Summer sighs, a single quivering breath._

_"Whenever it does show itself to me, that's how I see it. My eight-year old self standing on that pier, staring out into the fog. Only hearing the water," she says, "Only remembering the wind."_

_~~~_

_The wind…_

With a jolt, Raven snaps her eyes open, already cursing herself for having fallen asleep at all. The trees overhead moan, branches creeking as the leaves rustle like a thousand tiny beating wings. Raven swipes the hair from her face as it whips across her vision.

Her sword comes unsheathed in one swift beat and she takes position over the boy, who is just beginning to rouse.

"Wh-What?" he slurs, "What is it?"

She pays him no mind, eyes narrowed towards the sky. Against the scarlet sunrise overhead and partially hidden by the forest copse, a black cloud is moving. Or oozing, she supposes is the more appropriate term.

Either way, it reeks of Grimm.

Raven sorts quickly through her options. Attack is the first to come to mind, but the thing clearly is not any variety of a simple beowolf or ursa. Fighting it could take time, expose the child to danger, or even draw other Grimm to the scene.

Letting it pass by seems to be the more logical decision, even if it leaves an inexplicably bad taste in Raven's mouth.

"Get up and stay quiet," she mutters to the boy, who scrambles to his feet without a word. Raven directs him to duck beneath one of the larger trees. The wind howls as the black cloud grows closer, whistling hard in their ears. Flicking hair impatiently from her face, Raven moves to cover as well, sheathing her sword along the way.

At the last second, she turns in curiosity, glancing up at the creature they're hiding from. A spindly body can be made out through the smoke, bone-thin, with long, gangly limbs. The coloring is pitch black, veined at some points in blood red. Something else is tucked at its side, beneath the arm, fluttering and tattered. The Grimm turns, locking eyes with her, there is a flash of the white mask, the dead golden eyes and then…

Raven's sword drops from her hand.

_"Brother…?"_

A roar pierces the dawn. It sounds akin to the screams of dying men. Wind rages, wild and sudden, creating a storm of leaves and twigs and rocks, enough that Raven has no choice but to shield her face.

When she can open her eyes again, the cloud and the creature are gone.

Raven stands very still, staring out at where the Grimm had been. It's already vanished, but she can't look away, as if she can will it back to her through gaze alone. A coldness is streaking through her body, coursing like a blade beneath her skin.

"Shit," she breathes, "What the hell is going on?"

Raven isn't a fool and she has not gotten this far by clinging to old sentiments. Qrow is dead. This is a fact as real to her as the cold marble of Summer's grave she had laid his ashes beside.

It must be a trick then. An illusion. But why would…

Raven's eyes widen.

The boy jumps when Raven grabs his shoulder, spinning him around.

"Ow! What are you—"

"Go straight down this path," she says, jabbing a finger ahead of them, "No turns. Once you get to the swamp, look for hallows filled with black feathers. They'll point you to the glade where my tribe is waiting. I've already informed them of the circumstances. They won't hurt you." She gave him a hard, assessing look. "You get all that?"

"Huh? I mean yeah, but—"

"Good." Raven turns away, sliding her mask over her face. "Get your ass moving. I'll meet up with you later."

"But—"

"And don't you dare get eaten. Enough of my time's being wasted these days."

"But _where are you going?_ " Oscar practically yells. His young eyes are huge, frightened and lost, hands clenched white around his backpack. The mounting trepidation lies naked upon his face. Raven would've almost thought he wouldn't be able to handle himself, if not for that deep green flicker of Ozpin in his eyes.

Endless and old. Too fucking perceptive as usual.

"I'll be back," Raven says simply, and doesn't think about how little she has made of those words so far.

She doesn't wait for Oscar to reply either. With a sharp crack of magic, Raven spreads her wings. She feels the wind along her feathers, lifting her higher into the sky, until Mistral's forests become ill-defined patches of green and brown.

Somewhere amongst it all, Raven knows, is a little smudge of red, a whirlwind mess of petals. Still running. Still searching for what's already gone.

_Foolish girl._


	11. XI

**XI.**

~~~

Ruby runs harder and faster than she ever has before. The forest liquefies and becomes a river, sending her who knows where, far away from Jaune and his stupid, stupid lies.

 _He's wrong._ A little girl whispers inside her, surrounded by black feathers and snow. _He's wrong…_

Shadows rush from the trees.

Ruby gasps, skidding to a halt. There is a sound, crossed somewhere between the flap of wings and the clank of armor. She unlatches Crescent Rose, thinking it's Grimm, hoping blindly that it isn't Jaune again trying to stop her, because she doesn't know what she'll do if it is.

Raven Branwen melts from the forest, wild and rattling with quills and cracked beads.

"Going somewhere, kid?"

She makes no move to come closer, stopping about fifteen feet away. The massive sword at her hip remains where it is, but Ruby still has to force herself not to shrink back. She shifts Crescent Rose to her side, but makes a point of keeping it out.

"Leave me alone."

"That's not an answer," Raven says back, arms crossing, "Where is your father? Your sister?"

"None of your business."

They stare at each other. Raven glances over her shoulder, toward the winding trail ahead. When she speaks again, it's almost conversationally.

"The only thing that way is an old lab of Haven's. Plenty of rumors around there, odd deaths and illegal shipments of Atlesian technology. Since the Grimm broke through the wall yesterday, White Fang and student protesters have swarmed the main courtyard."

Ruby stays silent, even as her chest lurches in panic. Protesters mean guardsmen too. She'll have to find a way to sneak in now, maybe a back door or window. Ruby spins around, brain already plotting out another route before Raven ends her thoughts abruptly, dropping them as if mayflies.

"You won't find him there."

Her face is smooth of expression, alien in everything but those eyes.

"The Grimm around Mistral," she says, "They're not the ones you're use to in Vale. Their strength, their age, their cleverness—it's all different. They can see your weaknesses. They have learned how to lie."

"What's your point?" Ruby says, her voice halting, her knuckles leeched white, "Why should I care if—"

"I saw him."

The grass breathes beneath Raven's footsteps.

"A Grimm with my little brother's face."

She closes in slowly, as if Ruby is some injured animal she has backed into a corner.

"I don't know what you hope to accomplish or where you're trying to go. But if it has anything to do with that creature, then it isn't the right way."

"Shut up," Ruby snaps suddenly, almost cutting her off. A lump is trying to form in her throat. "Do you really think I don't know that? I never…I have no choice. It's the only way."

But Raven just shakes her head. "I see you still don't understand."

"I understand plenty."

"But not what matters."

"What's that suppose to mean?"

"You are afraid," Raven replies, "Of moving on. Of accepting things."

"No… _no_ , go _away._ "

"But the world turns. Time marches. Things will be alright eventually."

"No they _won't._ Go _away_."

"You should not pretend otherwise if you are angry."

"I _am_ angry!" Ruby screams, breath shuddering and she doesn't know why she's pouring her heart out to this woman, who can leave things behind without a second glance and never think about them again.

"I couldn't save Penny," she whispers, "I couldn't save Pyrrha. If there's even a chance now that things can be different then I have to take it."

Raven looks at her, head tilted, not at all perturbed by the outburst. For a long bemused beat, there is only silence.

"I want you to picture him."

Ruby blinks. "W-What?"

"Think of him the way you remember. Any memory that comes to mind."

She has no intention to, but like any ghost, Uncle Qrow arrives unbidden.

He is smiling when he appears in her mind's eye, leaning up against the headboard of her bed, all the stress lines soft with mirth and the hard eyes twinkling with secrets. It is the night before he finally left her and the last story he ever told and Ruby doesn't know why out of all the wonderful memories she had of him, the only ones that come readily are the ones where things end.

Ruby shakes her head, feeling the tears begin to gather again.

"Wha—Why do I—"

"What you're seeing now," Raven says softly, almost gently, "The Qrow that you knew—do you really think a Grimm has the first idea of how to bring him back? Can you tell me, truly, that the thing you saw is the same man who sat next to you beneath the stars? Who picked you up and taught you how to fight and tied that cloak to your shoulders?"

Her crimson gaze lies heavily for a second over Ruby's bare back and Ruby feels herself flinch, the guilt making her head lower. She has no idea how Raven knows all of this, but she supposes that isn't what's important either.

"I just want to save him," she says, voice breaking, "Just him. Why is that wrong?"

There is a sigh. It almost sounds tired. Almost sad.

"You are confusing what is wrong with what must be."

Ruby stares at the ground, small fists clenched at her sides. She is quiet, but Raven seems to have nothing left to say either.

Her eyes stay down when she hears the woman finally retreat, gliding back into the shadows of the woods.

It is only when she's at the point of vanishing that Raven speaks again, softly, even if Ruby can hear every word echoing like thunder.

"And perhaps too, you cannot move forward because you're afraid there were words left unsaid. That you never told him you loved him and so he never knew."

At last, Ruby raises her head, heart pounding. It must be a trick of the light, a mirage in the rippling wetness of her own tears, but Raven's eyes in the distance seem to swim with pain.

"But believe me, he did. He was a fool for many reasons, but not about that. Not about you. He knew."

And the trees reach out for Raven and swallow her up easily.

~~~

Taiyang watches Yang smash through the front gate with her bare hands. The right door snaps off its hinges with a furious squeal and goes skidding some forty feet away. It's reckless and insane, lacking all the finesse and technique that they'd spent weeks buckling down, but Tai finds he doesn't care.

He hopes Lionheart can hear it all the way from his office. He kind of wants to rip off the left gate too.

No matter how long they've known her, the other kids still pause for a beat to gawk at Yang, edging their way past the rubble. Only the Jaune boy runs through the dust cloud without a glance, sharp blue eyes already darting about for the closest entrance. Determination shines like steel in his gaze and Tai wonders again exactly what Ruby means to this boy.

"Come on!" Jaune yells, sprinting through the ruined gardens and the open courtyard. They follow at his heels, pass the fountains and the stone bench Tai and Lionheart had confronted each other over less than two days ago. They climb the stairs, heels clacking and when there continues to be nothing all around them but dead silence, Tai realizes something is wrong.

"Hold on," he says and stops where he is. He's broad enough that Ren and Nora are halted immediately behind him, while Yang (miracle of miracles) listens and skids to a standstill.

Jaune is at the door though, hand on the wrought-iron catch. Shadows cast over the fragile rice paper and it hits Tai suddenly and out of nowhere that they are coming from the other side.

"Get down!" Surging forward on old instincts, Tai grabs the kid's bicep, wrenching him from the door and nearly off his feet.

Not a second later, a bullet explodes through the wooden frame.

Jaune yelps and Nora screams. Yang yells something that is ninety percent profanity and then Tai is too busy shoving all these kids away from the doors and out of range.

Giant figures emerge, heavy boots against paneling. Two men stand at the threshold of Haven's entrance, both garbed in guard uniforms. The glinting badges of Mistral's Council are pinned tight to their lapels and scars mark the sides of their chins and mouths. One of them lowers a pistol and sticks it back into a holster at his belt. From the way Yang's jaw clenches and Jaune stiffens, it doesn't seem a first encounter for everyone.

"The hell do you think you're doing?" Yang snarls, eyes piping red.

The men regard her icily.

"We said we'd be in touch," one of them replies, "Didn't we, you smartass little brat?"

Sharp flaks of rage shoot through Taiyang's veins. His eyes narrow and he takes a step in front of Yang. The sky rumbles and he growls, "Say that again, I dare you. Who do you think you are? Shooting at us without provocation."

They glare at him, but a note of dubiousness lingers in the gazes. Aura crackles across the pavement, hot sparks of gold that singe the pale stone. Finally the man who spoke previously slips a hand into his pocket, producing a knotted scroll.

"By order of Leonard Lionheart, Headmaster of Haven Academy," he reads, "And with express approval from the Mistral Council, we present this warrant of arrest for one Ruby Rose of the former Beacon Academy."

Behind him, Nora sputters out a confused, 'HUH?' in tandem with Ren's stammered 'What?' The word 'arrest' bounces up and down stupidly in Taiyang's head. _Arrest? Ruby?_

"What are the charges?" Jaune asks, full of forced calm even as Yang trembles with fury beside him.

"One count of conspiracy—for plotting the Grimm's breach of the outer wall," the bastard responds, reading from the parchment with utter indifference, "And one count of willful homicide—for the murder of a Mistral Gate Patrolman."

Taiyang nearly bursts out laughing. Ruby killing someone? His little girl releasing Grimm on the innocent? Ruby? It's so ridiculous, so _impossible_ that Tai can't even imagine it.

Ren and Nora are on a similar page.

"You're freaking crazy!" the latter shouts, hammer tightening in her grip, while the former gives a more logical retort.

"You have no substantial evidence at all that Ruby hurt anyone. Plus, she was with Jaune or us since before the breach even started. Are you saying she went out in the middle of the night to lure Grimm to the wall and somehow had them wait patiently there until this completely random moment in time to attack?"

But the men just shake their heads. The scroll is rolled up and tucked away.

"Save it, kid, we're not here to begin debates or consider arguments. You can plead her case to the Council once she's in custody," they stare down at them, eyes black and unfeeling, "Now tell us where she is."

"Didn't you hear me the last time?" Yang spits, trying to push Tai aside, "Fuck. If. We. Know."

The men's shoulders go rigid. Their hands begin sinking towards their guns and the tension hardens, blood clotting in a vein set to rupture.

"Liar," they hiss.

The sky is graying. Lightning fizzles from Taiyang's pores, his fingertips and the ends of his hair. Who knows how quickly things would've degenerated if Jaune had not suddenly spoken again then.

"And the alternative?"

The cold gazes shift toward him, but Jaune doesn't budge, pinning them down with his own glare.

"I'm afraid we haven't a clue what you mean, boy."

"I think you do. Ruby isn't the endgame here, we all know that. I'm asking what you—what Lionheart wants in exchange for clearing her name."

"She committed high crimes against the kingdom. You would imply that bargaining is on the table?"

"Are you saying it isn't?"

The two men exchange sharp glances. A minute passes before the one who had read from the scroll lowers his hand from his pistol. He smirks, the first real sign of emotion on his face, and it is jagged and mean.

"I suppose we could come to an agreement. Circumstantial evidence after all. The girl's record is as good as clean, provided you bring Headmaster Lionheart what he needs."

Yang's fists are balled so tightly that Tai can almost hear the metal giving.

"And that would be?" she whispers.

"A trifle task. Not worth its weight in the grand scheme of things. Simply turn around, head home," the man says.

"And relinquish Qrow Branwen's belongings."

Yang's hand is on Tai's shoulder, practically throwing him out of her way as she screams and charges. He barely notices because his Semblance is already snaking through his skin, summoning thunder from the overcast. He doesn't even notice when Jaune rushes forward too, Nora and Ren not far behind, or when the two guards draw their guns in surprise. Shouts and bullets fly while other guardsmen start flowing into the courtyard, appearing from every nook and cranny.

Somewhere up in his teetering tower, Taiyang knows Lionheart is watching. A coward inclined toward cruelty—paving a road in children and dead men.

There is a flash and a boom. The sky cracks open, full of dragon teeth.

~~~

The path winds out before Ruby, ugly and bristling with thorns. It tugs her closer with nothing but the pangs of her own desperation and a Grimm's promise. Ruby worries her lip and all her doubts, latent and otherwise, bubble to the surface. They chase each other—a tempest in the looming waves of her thoughts.

(Yet in her heart of hearts, where the little girl in the snow lies, she has already declared that Raven doesn't know anything. She was never there and so she cannot hurt now or ache or even understand. She doesn't care, not really, and so she does not know _anything_ ).

Ruby's eyes gleam. There is a door inside her that should not have opened. The crack left ajar streams glittering light and caresses her with the yellowed veneers of the past. Black feathers lay scattered at her feet, at her knees as she finally crouches down into the dense snow.

She picks one up, watches it flake in her hand. And even as the ground splits and the sky grows beady with eyes, she cannot move.

Ruby makes her choice, even as a rasping voice urges, _Get out of here, little rose. Don't look back. Keep going. Keep going._

 _I can't,_ she cries, hands huddled around her burning center, _You never taught me how._

~~~

(And in the branches overhead, Raven watches, exasperated. She has half a mind to leave her to it, but knows that she can't. The child is her hairshirt now and there is something to be owed).

~~~

_"I thought you weren't part of all this."_

_Raven arches a brow. "This?"_

_"You know," Taiyang rubs his forehead, feeling the beginning tremors of a headache, "The schools. Ozpin. Why would you go so far for him?"_

_"It's not for him," Raven retort curtly, "His is a pointless design. Salem can't be stopped. Ozpin will fail and keep taking down whoever's blind or fool enough to follow him."_

_Her eyes are pointed at those last words, but Taiyang lets the jab slide for now. They've already spent the better halves of their adult lives fighting over the Ozpin issue and it can afford to wait._

_"Then why?" he asks simply._

_She crosses her arms, glaring daggers at the moon, and he's struck randomly of another time and another place. The spring nights and quiet hands. All of it now bleach-bone memories._

_"Because it needs to end," Raven says, "Because I want to be free."_

_Taiyang laughs. "Of what? The twin that you fought with and loved and was all that mattered to you in the beginning? You think removing all the traces of him will somehow make you free?"_

_"I'm not talking about Qrow," she whispers and there's real hurt in her voice and Taiyang feels suddenly guilty._

_Raven breathes, hands digging into her sleeves. "You don't know how long I've been stuck in this story. Caught in this chess game between gods. Seeing the things they're capable of doing. I'm sick of it, Tai, and I'm tired."_

_The walls of the inn groan, weighted down by the heaving winds and rain. Taiyang is grateful that it drowns out their voices. God knows Ruby needs whatever sleep she can manage to find._

_"Raven," he says, carefully, "Lionheart will take everything. The scythe, the flask, even that ragged old cape Summer made him second year. Everything. And maybe it doesn't mean much to you, but…to my girls—to Yang—that's all they're going to have. You'd let him do this for freedom?"_

_He searches for the woman he remembers in her eyes, even if all he finds are walls and shutters._

_"If it is for freedom," she says, "For freedom, I'll do whatever it takes, even if that means protecting Ozpin, or letting Mistral destroy every single thing my brother once owned," she halts for a second, eyes flickering, "I just told you this is not about us. It's not about Qrow."_

_(But it is)_

_Taiyang does not need the words to be said. He is not so much a fool as Raven wishes he was._

_"Then you're not making much sense," he shoots back, "If you want things to end then you should just hand Ozpin over, wherever he is."_

_She snorts. "To that stupid old coward? Don't be ridiculous. Old Oz will be dead within days under his watch and then even this current pathetic little modicum of resistance against Salem will crumble. She'll take what she wants and swallow us all."_

_"Isn't that going to happen anyway, according to you? What does it matter, as long as you're 'free'?"_

_Silence._

_Raven and Taiyang gaze into each other, torrential fire against unyielding ice._

_"You insinuate a lot of things about me, Tai," she says at last, quietly._

_He sighs, frustrated. Tired beyond reckoning. He tries not to shout._

_"Why can't you just admit it? You don't believe in this fight anymore, but Qrow did. He never stopped and now this is about you, thinking you can make amends by guessing at what he could have wanted."_

_"I don't need to guess," Raven snaps back, voice rising, a strange glitter in her eyes, "He left the tribe for Ozpin's mission. He left me. Nothing was more important to him than that."_

_Taiyang shakes his head. "You left_ him. _You left us all. You don't know what was important to him."_

_Raven bears her teeth, glinting white, sharper than a human's should be._

_"Don't tell me I didn't know my own brother."_

_But the hard stiffening in her shoulders suggests that he's right. For Raven, they were all frozen right where she'd placed them those seventeen years ago. In her mind, Qrow will always be that same scowling boy, with his bad luck and his sad eyes, who clung to her like a shadow and then left her for a dream._

_"I know you regret how it ended," Taiyang whispers, "I know you are ashamed."_

_The words barely land before Raven's hands are clenched around his collar, wrenching him close. Taiyang doesn't really even flinch. He notes remotely that she still smells like the forest skies, muddled though it is now by the stench of smoke and despair and dying things._

_"Don't," she hisses and falters for a second before continuing, "Do not_ test _me. The mission was what counted for him. He would've been worried about where Ozpin would be. Whether the relics are still closely guarded. Nothing else mattered more."_

_The hand twisted, fingers more akin to talons bruise the surface of his skin. Nothing, her hold seems to say, tightening with every beat. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing._

_"You're wrong," Taiyang croaks, and his head tilts, gesturing behind him towards the wall, "There was one thing."_

_She looks. He hadn't expected her to, but she does and if isn't the lack of oxygen making his vision spotty, then he swears he can catch Crescent Rose's blade glow like flames in her eyes._

_Raven goes completely still, enough that the pattering storm outside magnifies by ten and Taiyang drops from her grasp like dead meat._

_He stumbles, coughing slightly and massaging his throat. When he pulls himself together, Raven is still standing there and staring right through him._

_"We walked down different paths a long time ago," she says, "He had his family and I had mine. I don't care if he hated me."_

_The statement comes from nowhere, but Taiyang only looks at her, not surprised in the least._

_"Is that what you think?" he asks softly, "That he hated you?"_

_Instead of a response, Raven traces the scythe's head with her fingertip, the familiar gearwork and design. She gazes at it for a long time and then she straightens, unstrapping the mask from her belt. Her boots click as she strides toward the window._

_"Watch yourself, Tai," she says simply, "I'll be seeing you soon."_

_He isn't sure they will. Taiyang's nails dig into his palms. He hates the sight of her back with unbridled passion and it occurs to him that it's all Yang probably remembers. Yet he still can't stop her, not this time either. She will go, but not before she hears what he needs to say._

_"You know he was afraid too," Taiyang whispers, watching her freeze mid-air to the handle, "Of his Semblance hurting the girls. Of ruining them somehow."_

_Taiyang straightens his back. He stands tall before his first love's large, liquid gaze._

_"But he still chose to stay. He chose them even though it was hard and terrifying. And he'd never accept that you're sorry, Raven. He'd never forgive you for leaving. Not if you don't do what's right."_

_~~~_

__He spots her as she lands on the golden tiles of a rooftop, not sixty feet from where he's smashing an elbow into a goon's nose.

Taiyang nearly stumbles, heart skipping two rapid beats as they lock eyes. Beyond the immediate onslaught of a thousand aimless questions, he understands somehow, without the need for words, why she's here. 

"Raven!" he yells, and Yang jolts at the name. A man goes sailing over their heads, twice the size of Nora who's cackling madly. He had no idea the girl's Semblance was fueled by electricity, but it's a handy coincidence nonetheless. 

"Dad?" Yang calls, eyes wide with alarm. Ren spin-kicks another guard into Jaune's shield. The river of security seems never-ending. They wouldn't get far if they tried to move together. 

Taiyang grinds his teeth and jabs a finger towards the rooftop, "All of you, follow that bird!" 

Incredulous glances flash in his direction. Yang balks at him like he's crazy. 

"What?" 

"The bird, go with that bird! I'll handle things here!" 

"But—" 

"YANG!" Tai roars, "Do as I say and follow that damn bird! It'll lead you to Ruby!" 

Yang turns around without another word. She follows the bird while the JNPR kids scramble after. 

The raven soars into the air as his daughter disappears over the rooftop. For a beat, their gazes meet again and Taiyang's heart swells in a timid, hesitant way, as if he can't quite believe what he's seeing. The sky thrashes with dry lightning and infused aura and he remembers Ruby in the snow at eight years old. He was watching through a window, unable to summon the energy to rise from bed. 

But she was happy, giggling freely as she gazed up at her uncle, her cheek pressed against his side, a tiny hand wound around his wrist. 

_Bring her home, Yang,_ Tai thinks and can nearly hear Qrow after him, an old echo of assent. 

_Bring the poor kid home…_

_~~~_

The raven leads them into the woods, through the damp squelch of swamp mud and down a writhing trail of thorns. An old courtyard comes into view, Yang notes, all fractured tiles and wreathed in vines. The ruins of a dilapidated warehouse squat beyond the iron-welded gates, half-choked by trees and police tape. 

Clumps of people are gathered everywhere. Haven uniforms and peaceful White Fang crests and touted red signs slathered in painted messages of _No More_ and _Today We Fight._ They learn that the place use to be a former lab of Haven's, now under public scrutiny for the back-alley deals that take place here. 

"Stop Lionheart and his Council cronies!" A winged Faunus boy yells to the pumped fists of at least thirty comrades and Yang feels strangely reassure. They may not have the leverage to touch Lionheart anymore, but someone in Mistral will hold him accountable. Someone will make sure he gets what he's due. It's a vicious, but contented thought. 

When they request access through the gate, the protesters direct them towards a row of Atlesian guards, shiny and polished in their metallic armor. It's a small squad and they're young—military specialists fresh out of the academy. Their smiles are easy and real. 

"We've been stationed here for a few weeks now," one of them says when Jaune asks, "Got notice of an unauthorized shipment to this place. Super expensive machinery paid off the books. Heard it was some kind of tracer or whatever to analyze residual aura. Our commander was _pissed off._ She headed back to Atlas for an explanation. Left us here on watch 'til she comes back." 

"If the General lets her anyway," a second guard grumbles while another one adds, "If her _father_ lets her you mean." 

They elbow each other for the disrespect and Yang gets a sudden inkling. A kernel of a suspicion that burrows quickly into her brain. 

"Who's in charge then?" Yang interrupts unintentionally, cutting Jaune off from his questions about the machine (which they will address again later because it sounds too damn familiar and that can't ever be a good thing). 

"Eh, not really anyone from our side. I mean, the Commander's sister is still here. Use to go to Beacon before all the terrible things that went down there. She hasn't exactly graduated yet though so—" 

"Honestly, we've kinda just melded together with the natives. Some of the protesters are in the local militia. The White Fang members here also follow the old leader and that guy was all about the peace and harmony." 

Yang almost can't hear them anymore over the stampede of her heart. Faintly, she catches Ren and Nora making noises of shock and their gazes darting towards her while Jaune asks hastily for the commander's name. 

Their alarm is received with various odd looks, but eventually the men shrug and answer. 

"Winter Schnee. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm pretty sure Commander Schnee actually had a meeting with the protest leader before she left right? Ghira Belladonna's daughter?" 

"Yeah, I remember that. We weren't expecting them. Kinda weird now, since she and Lady Weiss have been stuck together like glue ever since." 

Jaune says something to her, or maybe it's Nora. Yang can't tell. She pivots on her heel, sending dust flying and isn't sure if she wants to go tearing through the site herself or demand the guards to take her. 

Her heart is hammering, threatening to burst through her ribs and catch fire in her blood. 

_No way, no fucking—_

"Hey, there they are now!" the guards say and wave blithely at something over her head, calling out, "Ms. Blake! Lady Weiss! These folks here are looking to speak with you." 

Yang is so frozen that she can't even turn around, but it's not like she needs to. She can see every second play out like a reel of tape in her head. The abrupt and stunned halt, the choked inhale of surprise. Whatever they're holding crashes to the ground in a heap and even though Yang is giving this whole optimism thing another try, there had always been a small part of her that thought she would never ever hear those voices again. 

"…Yang?" 


	12. XII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re-posted with fixed tenses and minor edits. Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

**XII.**

~~~

_Three years pass before she sees him again._

_At thirteen, Ruby is a jot taller, a smidge stronger but no less reckless and no less eager. She's trying to enroll at Signal, because she's always known what she wanted to do with her life; and her father argues with her endlessly about it, because he doesn't think she has a clue._

_It's particularly bad one night in late spring, when they're both tired and at wit's end. Dad raises his voice for the first time in years and it booms like ancient thunder. He snaps that she is too slight and too small to follow the huntsmen path and her previous two rejections only cement this further. What good is it to save others if she can't even save herself? Never mind that he is not really seeing her as he shouts any of this._

_Yang spends most of the fight staring into her lap. Yet Ruby knows the only thing that could ever buy her sister's silence is her agreement and that is what hurts most of all._

_They don't trust her, for no reason or fault of her own, and it's not fair._

_"This is what I want to be!" she screams, foot stomping against the rug, "MOM HAD HER CHOICE WHY CAN'T I HAVE MINE?"_

_And she runs before Dad can either finally blow his fuse or start crying. The way his face drains into chalk gives no indication which, but Ruby doesn't want to look at his face long enough to figure it out. She doesn't want to feel guilty or ugly inside because she shouldn't have to. The last thing she hears is Yang calling her name, before the back door slams in her wake._

_The ash tree is ridged and cool beneath her back, soothing the rapid thrum of her heart. She pulls out her scroll and writes to Uncle Qrow. He hasn't been allowed to contact them while on missions and Ruby hopes she doesn't get him in trouble, but there's no one else to talk to and she's never felt so alone._

_At one point, she has to stop to wipe the screen of tears and she doesn't even know what she's saying really. She doesn't remember Mom much anymore, but her ghost seems to permeate every inch of who Ruby's trying to be. There is a part of her that is proud of this resemblance and another that wishes (very secretly) that she looked a little less like the past. She is tired frankly of being judged based on what happened to Mom._

_Of course none of how she feels changes her instant regret once she presses send. She's just about to rescind the message when he calls._

_"Ruby," his voice drifts through the static-filled line, the first she's heard it in three years, "I'm coming home."_

_Then the CCT severs the connection. For almost five minutes, she sit there with the dial tone in her ear before she can remember to ask 'when.'_

_The next morning, Yang lets her take the bathroom first as a peace offering and Dad is fumbling around in the kitchen, trying to start breakfast. His eyes are swollen red and Ruby's stomach curls with remorse. She feels like a monster and so she takes his hands and makes up with him, even if her point didn't get across._

_Things have to move on after all. And almost a month later, when the grasses sway with scarlet blossoms and Ruby is beginning to wonder if she'd imagined the whole thing, he comes home._

_She will remember the dyed light of sunset cutting diagonally across his waist, how he stood in the living room as if he'd never left at all. Dad and Yang are shocked, but the latter pounces on him anyway and Dad claps him on the shoulder and smiles even as he chides him for turning up without notice. Only Ruby is left staring at him._

_He's paler and thinner than before, the bags beneath his eyes a bit heavier. In the time apart, he has seen a few things and she won't have any conception of what those things could've been until much, much later._

_For now though, he smells the same and the grin and the touch are the same when his hand rests over her head._

_"Hey there, kiddo," he says, quietly, "Miss me?"_

_Then Ruby hugs him, almost knocking him over, and his arms come around and he holds her tight._

_"Nope," she says, in between breathless laughter, even if her heart is echoing 'Always.'_

_Always._

_As he promised, he brings her and Yang back a Grimm fang each, polished ivory and sharp as blades. A loud dinner then commences where they both try to skewer pieces of food with the souvenirs until Dad threatens confiscation. Uncle Qrow tells them stories about his missions, skirting the details (whether for Dad's sake or his own, she can't discern) and even though they are not as honest as the old ones Ruby loved, he makes her laugh and for a while, she's happy again._

_The best part of all though, comes later. Following dinner and right before bed, he knocks on her door with a huge sheaf of blank paper. With frank nonchalance, he sets lets it thud onto her desk, shrugging when she stares at him._

_"How else are you gonna make the designs?"_

_"The what?"_

_"For the weapon."_

_"The_ what _?"_

_He scoffs like it should be obvious._

_"You wanna go to Signal, right? If you recall, I did work there for about three years. 's a long time not to have learned a few things about admissions. I can tell you now that having a crafted weapon and personalized fighting style is going to impress by miles."_

_She stares some more, frowning at the papers in her lap._

_"But…I don't know how to…"_

_And then Ruby trails off because he's staring back at her, wordless, amusement dancing in his eyes. her own grow wide as she understands._

_"Wait, are you…?"_

_Uncle Qrow leans back against the wall._

_"Better off chasing the dreams that count."_

_She knocks him over this time when she tackles him, forcing him into a chair with an audible 'oof.' She muffles a thousand 'thank yous' into his shirt, squeezing his middle tight and his chest rumbles as he chuckles. His hands settle on her shoulders._

_She won't know how far he traveled to return to Patch, passing through the arid cliff heads and storm-riddled valleys. She won't know the demerits and reprimands he'll receive for aborting his mission and she won't know how long he argues with Dad about letting her become a huntress. How things between them ultimately turn ugly and estranged._

_"Alright, alright," he says, nudging her up, "Take it down a notch, lest you want your old man to hear. I'm gonna need him in a good mood for the next couple of days."_

_She scowls, her elation dampening. "Do you even have to tell him?"_

_"'Fraid so."_

_"He'll just say no. He always does."_

_There's more resentment seeded in her tone than she intended, but Qrow doesn't scold her. He just stays quiet for a moment, humming thoughtfully._

_"I get that you're frustrated. And I know how damn stubborn Tai can be, believe me, but try not to be too hard on him. He has his reasons." Her nose wrinkles because whatever reasons there may be, they are still not_ her _reasons and shouldn't that signify at least something?_

_"He thinks I'll end up like Mom."_

_It's a whisper of truth._

_Tension stiffens Uncle Qrow's frame. He goes a little white, just like Dad, eyes flickering, and for a heart-stopping second Ruby's afraid he's going to take it all back. But then he sighs, long and hollowed through. It's the most exhausted sound she'll ever hear or remember._

_"It's not on you what happened to her, little rose," he says, "Just leave your dad to me."_

_And then they speak no more of it that night._

_In another week, Ruby has the preliminary sketches of Crescent Rose. Uncle Qrow snorts when she presents them to him, but there's no denying that he's a little touched. Using his old Signal connections, he secures the necessary parts and tools. Then he sits in the shed out back with her for hours every day, showing her how to weigh barrels and drill couplings and align gears._

_When the scythe is complete, he helps her spray-paint it red. It's deadly and beautiful, but most importantly it's hers and she loves it beyond words. Uncle Qrow checks the grips and safeties for the hundredth time, before nodding in approval, giving her a gentle noogie when she jumps on him again._

_The hard part is just beginning, he warns. He's a strict mentor, who will demand a lot from her and make her life difficult if he can help it. In the end though, Ruby becomes strong. She is fast and dangerous and a force of reckoning. And she's more a reflection of Mom than ever before._

_(Sometimes, Uncle Qrow can't look at her._

_He tries not to and he thinks she doesn't notice, but she does)._

_When Signal mails her acceptance letter in the fall, he takes her out for ice cream and tells her he's proud. Ruby thinks she could die from the sheer joy of it right then. And when he leaves again, the departure doesn't feel so much like a kick to the stomach anymore. She has her own path now—one forked away from Uncle Qrow's—and it's too exciting and new to be frightening._

_Ruby forgets to say 'I love you.' At the time, it just hadn't seemed a big deal._

_Gods, if only she'd known._

_~~~_

The door finds her. Ruby knows this because she's zipped across the dilapidated building twice without luck, only barely steering clear of the rabble and lights on the other side of the broad gates. She supposes she should count her stars that the protestors have been restricted from entering the actual grounds at all and that there is no security patrolling the area.

The merits of breaking a window are just starting to look tempting when she catches that slab of obsidian metal, gleaming beneath a desiccated curtain of ivy.

It's huge, stretching at least seven and a half feet high. Deep gouges line the frame, as if claws had attempted to tear it down. The knob is burgundy and covered in a web-like design akin to black veins. It almost seems to glow, as if a dying chunk of ember. Or the pupil of a giant eye.

Logic dictates immediately that she shouldn't open it. That what she should do is run from here now, all the way back to Jaune and Yang and her father, where the sun has ways to reach her and the shadows do not crawl.

But logic dictates a lot of things, none of which she cares to hear about.

The door swings wide without a sound, even though she half-expects it to burn or be immoveable.

Ruby's heart lodges into her throat when the darkness spills out.

It's almost a wall. Stifling and swirling and shapeless and faceless.

She can feel it slide over her skin, vaguely palpable, and mingle with her breath. It tastes of hunger and ashes.

_Well?_ The Grimm's voice echoes, a floating airless croon. _Step inside, flower child. Your uncle is waiting._

Ruby squeezes Crescent Rose's handle, skin prickling across the length of her spine. Her knees knock and her body wavers and she is _scared_. So very scared…

"Will I…" she licks her lips, swallowing, "Will I really see him again?"

_Of course. We had a deal, did we not? Come on now. Nothing to fear._

A hideous smile lingers in the words. Ruby doesn't move, her boots may as well buried in the soil. There is no end to be seen past the door. No limit. No light. There's no way back out. She can't move.

_Ruby…_

Her eyes snap up. Immediately they strain , but even they, in their piercing light, cannot find form or face in the darkness.

"Uncle Qrow?" she stumbles to the door, hugging the edge, "I-Is that you?"

Thudding silence follows. She waits, and only in hindsight will she realize a tiny part of her hadn't wanted to hear an answer back. Perhaps even then, it had already known.

_You kept me waiting. What took you so long?_

_It's okay now, Ruby._

_Come inside._

Maybe it's the words unsaid that drives her forward, or the freshness of guilt or a child's unrelenting grief. Maybe it's some strand of old pain that Qrow had never meant to bind her to.

It's hardly clear, but Ruby runs through the door to the febrile clamor of her own heart. There is not another word left to say.

Not another thought left to have.

~~~

_The thing is, he tried to say goodbye._

_While Nora and Ren scouted ahead and Jaune stood some feet away, trying to get signal on his scroll, she settles him under a tree. He's been coughing and coughing and the sound is starting to sound very different to her. Strangled._

_Ruby's hands shake as she crouches over the makeshift stretcher, redoing all the knotting to make sure the blanket will hold his weight. Ragged holes hang from her stockings and splinters needle the surface of her palms from the branches she's lashed into support beams. They should sting, but she doesn't feel it. She doesn't care._

_The blood from his wound has leaked through the bandages. It festers with infection and the sweet-metallic stench of venom. But he touches her wrist when she comes to check on him and the corner of his mouth lifts like it doesn't hurt at all. He pats the spot beside him gently and Ruby remembers being eight again, with nothing but this man and an ash tree and the stories he weaved out of the stars._

_But she mustn't think about that now and so she sits down. Shoulder against his fever-flushed one, Ruby shares a lot of scattered and aimless ideas, a lot of fruitless plans that barely mask the breadth of her panic. She babbles ceaselessly and she tells him they're going to find an airship for him, even though the last one she saw laid in pieces amongst Shion's grisly wreckage._

_She says everything will be okay, because it has to be. It has to be. Though her attempts at reassurance don't come with the same ease his did. Her voice grows reedy and choked and she holds none of his strength, even if he'd been afraid then as well._

_Eventually, he tells her to calm down. There's a faint measure of concern in his eyes that makes Ruby feel ridiculous. She sucks in a deep breath and then exhales it out slowly. It fixes nothing because her school is still gone, her team is still broken, she's still stranded in the middle of the woods and her uncle is still dying, but she does it since he wants her to and at least the color seeps back into her vision._

_When Ruby nods to signal she's fine and he gives a tired little smile back. Then they're both quiet for a long moment, before he suddenly asks if she can recount her twelfth birthday party for him—the one where she unlocked her Semblance for the first time._

_"Missed it, ya know," he explains softly, "Missed a lot of things I shouldn't have."_

_She isn't certain how to respond to that, so she just holds his hand and tells him. Then she retells when Yang unlocked her Semblance as well. She tells him about those excruciating trips to the vet with Zwei and the dumb but hilarious bad blood between Taiyang and the local mechanic._

_For the first time, Ruby is the one with the stories and he listens to everything, giving her as much rapt attention as he can muster. She flips through all those crinkling snatches of time, all those moments in a life without him. It isn't until he asks about her Signal days that it begins to sound like he's trying to make a point somehow._

_She doesn't want to hear it though. In fact, she_ doesn't _hear it. At least that's what Ruby manages to convince herself of._

_"Well, I choked pretty hard on my first real Grimm fight. Couldn't handle the ricochet of the gun even though I had it down perfectly beforehand."_

_"Perfectly, huh? I seem to remember a lot of the same dirt-eating and skinned knees beforehand too though. And bawling."_

_She blushes, eyes darting on instinct to Jaune's back in the distance. "Well, yeah, but it was still easier 'cause you were there to tell me what to do. Why are you even bringing up this stuff anyway?"_

_He chuckles, dissolving into a wet cough at the end._

_"H-Heh, who's gonna hear? Your boyfriend's lookin' more than a little preoccupied over there."_

_Before Ruby can sputter out a reply to_ that _particular gem, Uncle Qrow just shakes his head. His face softens as he gazes at her._

_"I know you had your share of tough times, kiddo. I know things can be hard. But..you've made it through before and you'll find your way this time too. Always have, always will." A muscle twinges in his jaw. Pained. Sad. "You're strong, Ruby. Stronger than you have any idea of and you're going to be okay. Despite everything. And whether...Whether I'm there or not."_

_He says it so gently. With such ginger care that it almost doesn't sound like what it's meant to be. But no matter how she struggles to deny it, ice still crawls across her blood._

_Ruby doesn't want to talk anymore._

_"We should keep moving," she says, and her voice rebounds inside her skull. She tries to scramble to her feet and Qrow grabs her arm. His hand is heavy and boiling hot, feverish eyes watery bright._

_"Ruby, please—"_

_"No, y-you need to rest, Uncle Qrow."_

_"All those memories," he presses on, "All that time I spent away. You got on just fine, little rose. Maybe even better. I taught you how to swing a blade, sure, and I paid back what I could when you were small, but I could never have given you what was important. The person you are now and the even greater one you'll become, all the good in you, that came from inside and nowhere else. You never needed me, Ruby, not ever—"_

__"STOP!"

_She rips her arm out of his grip, jostling him enough that he starts hacking. But she's too terrified to do anything but watch. This is all wrong. All of it._

_"Why are you saying this?" her voice cracks, "We're going to make it out together. We're going to get you help."_

_He leans back against the trunk, lungs straining with each sawing breath. The most livid shade of purple Ruby has ever seen trickles from the corner of his mouth. He wipes it with his sleeve and keeps speaking even though it sounds like agony._

_"You should've had your mom. You deserved to have your mom. If there's anything I wish I could...she would've made you happy. She would've made your life good. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, little rose. It wasn't on you what happened to her. It was on—"_

_"Please stop talking," Ruby whispers._

_He halts and stares at her. She's not crying, but there must be something close to it in her expression. Something must make him look at her like that, all pale with the expanse of his desperation. Something that renders his voice very quiet when he responds, utterly baffled and strangely young._

_"…But it's the truth."_

_Perhaps it is. She doesn't care. The truth can stay away from her. She doesn't want it. All she wants is an airship and a bar of signal on her stupid scroll. She is barely sixteen and if there's any justice in this world, then none of this can be happening. Ruby shakes her head and closes her eyes, taking a long shuddering breath before reopening them. Even if her face still crumples like wet paper when she meets his gaze._

_"Please, Uncle Qrow. You're hurting me."_

_Then she turns away._

_Ruby storms right past a surprised Jaune, continuing on despite his puzzled calls after her. It takes at least twenty minutes of wandering around aimlessly for her to stop shaking and by then, the daylight's waning. Ren and Nora think there's a signpost up ahead that can at least indicate which direction Mistral's in. It really is getting too dark to keep going, but Ruby manages to insist. Every step narrows the distance. It's the only thought she has to lean on. She readies the stretcher and pretends the conversation never took place at all._

_And because Uncle Qrow could never ever hurt her, he doesn't mention it again._

_~~~_

Ruby steps into Patch.

Through the crimson-knobbed door lies the rolling sweet grass, the placid sunshine and flowers of youth. The fluffy clouds coasting lazily by. The burbling creek, oasis to speckled frogs and dragonflies. It's beautiful, it's home and it shouldn't be found here. It _isn't_ found here.

She processes this from somewhere far away.

The ash tree is even taller and wider than she remembers—all the branches a healthy mahogany. The thick canopy stretches into the sky, ready to dust the stars. She's somehow standing barely five feet away from it. So her boots crunch over the shed leaves which ring the perimeter.

So he is close enough to touch her face from where he's leaned against the trunk. There are no shadows this time. No silhouettes or murky figures in the night conjectured into being. He is looking at her directly, every curve and line of his face open to the light.

"Hey there, kiddo," her uncle says, "Miss me?"

She is crying now, Ruby thinks. At least, the edges of her vision have gone watery and misshapen. She can't understand what she's seeing, or if she's seeing anything at all. She doesn't know what is true and yet none of it seems to matter. Ruby's voice is puny when it comes, full of ache and honesty.

"Yes."

He smiles. A callused thumb smears away the wetness at her chin. A long, deft hand trussed with rings parts her hair, tucking locks behind the shell of her ear. The same one that had corrected her battle stance or checked Crescent Rose's gear-work for jams. The same one she had watched the fires consume an endless age ago.

"Is it really you?"

The face he makes at her is almost offended. Sardonic anyway. Like she's just asked a question she already knows the answer to.

"Of course, kid. Sheesh, it's only been a month, can't you recognize me anymore?"

It's all too real. Ruby barely manages to clamp her mouth shut, for fear of releasing a sudden fit of giggles. This is her uncle. Her father in every way but blood. He is here. Really here.

"You told me we'd always be together," she croaks, "I almost thought you lied."

He offers his hand.

"I would never lie to you."

_(_ And there's a flash of a moment, a fraction within a milisecond, that she sees him dying in the swamps of Anima and dead dead dead in the kingdom of Mistral, showers of feathers crumbling, violet blooms across his torso, caked in the lines of her palm, wistful eyes and a silver shroud and furnace doors shutting with a CLANG _CLANG CLANG)_

Ruby takes the hand.

Uncle Qrow's grin is full of teeth and knives.


	13. XIII.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So clearly I lied about there being only three or so chapters left. For better effect, I decided to break up these last parts into shorter lengths. New estimation is a total of about seventeen chapters.
> 
> PS: In the best way possible, I am thrilled with all the hearts this fic has been tearing out! Considering Volume Five is over as well, this story is probably mega-AU now, so thanks again for all the support! Please enjoy and review!

**XIII.**

~~~

_a face swims towards you. in the nowhere that is your body, in the senselessness of your mind. everywhere is darkness and the ground moves, concussing and shifting like a dream. where are you?_

_you recognize that face. it is young and kind. and so innocent. a palette of black and red and white white white. silver for eyes and…you owe her. You'll always owe her. You can't breathe._

_You bring misfortune. You're full of regret._

_And gods, you are a fool._

~~~

Patch, illusion or not, remains a trove of memories.

She follows him through the willows, where he'd once hoisted her on his shoulders, wading through the leaves that swayed like green, shimmering silk. There is the worn down trail leading into distant towns. And that wide outer plain, where she'd seen his back so many times, shrinking and shrinking into the distance and then into nothing.

"It looks so real," Ruby murmurs, skimming fingertips along the reeds, "It feels so real. What is this place?"

He tilts his head. "What do you mean? It's home."

She thinks about this carefully. "No, I…I walked into a Haven Lab. I arrived in Mistral. This can't be."

Uncle Qrow smiles, steering her away from the forest. "Perhaps. But wouldn't you rather it be? Easier in my opinion, the path of least resistance. Less mess to deal with."

"That's not what you used to tell me," Ruby says quietly.

A shrug. "I use to tell you lots of things, kid, the hell did I really know? I was barely functioning myself half the time."

Ruby ignores the cold knot cinching in her gut.

Eventually, they wind their way back to the ash tree and he plucks a wildflower sprouting near the roots, fashioning it into a ring. She can't help smiling when he offers it, delicately slipping the band around her thumb.

"I picked you flowers all the time back then," Ruby says, gazing at her hand, feeling the tiny petals tickle her skin, "Like whole baskets, just because I wanted you to make them into these."

"That was why?" He cocks an eyebrow, smirking, "Conniving little brat."

She giggles before she can help herself.

"Oh, you think that's funny, huh? C'mere, ya pipsqueak."

Ruby shrieks when he swipes for her, looping an arm tight across her front. She's in between screams of protest and laughing hysterically as he gets her in a headlock, mercilessly tousling her hair.

"Okay!" she says finally, breathless, "I give, I give!"

He makes time for one last noogie, before his grip loosens, allowing her to wriggle away, laughing still.

"You're so lame," she says, after calming down, blowing bangs out of her face and trying to repair some of the damage, "Look what you did. It's all messed up now."

He snorts and slicks a hand through his own untidy locks. "Like that bird's nest needed help with that."

It's such a Qrow thing to say. Ruby rolls her eyes. Then, while he's yammering about how hard it'd been to even clip her hair back in the mornings, she hugs him.

He grunts in surprise when her arms fly around his torso, her face pressing into his chest, despite having escaped his hold only a scant minute ago.

"Sorry," Ruby whispers, before he can comment, nails twisting up the back of his shirt. "Sorry, just…it's been hard, you know."

He is still. For a long beat, he is still. Then she feels the hands rise to her back, a thumb and forefinger resting warm against the base of her nape. His chest rises and falls as he breathes.

"I know."

"It hurt so much."

"I'm sorry."

Ruby's eyes are growing hot again.

"Stop leaving me behind," she says, "Don't let me go anymore."

Something reverberates from him, a vaguely amused sound.

"Flower child, I'm never letting you go again."

Ruby's lips peak in a smile, even as the tears trickle by. She sniffs, laying her damp cheek against his collar.

He smells of mildew and sickness and vapor. But it's Uncle Qrow and so Ruby thinks of home.

~~~

_Your first color is red. For your sister's eyes and your sister's blade and the ribbon of her wet, dripping hair. She loves you. You get in her way. She wishes you were stronger. You make her feel guilty._

_Red for the words left in your wake. For the whispers left to seep and bleed. Poison in the tribal grounds._

_Red for knuckles driving into your flesh and the turnstile of jagged teeth flashing by. Red for their plans._

__Cursed Dead-eyed boy, _the hands rage,_ Where is your Semblance?

_You scream at last, because_ the pain the pain _and something lunges out of you with a start. The forest is full of danger. The forest beckons death. A branch to impale on, a rock to bludgeon over, every misplaced foot and ill-timed hand._

_Your first color is red. And red._

_And red._

~~~

The cabin is there too—boxes of sunflowers lining the front, the rusted edges of the sheet metal roof. Drapes pulled tight behind all the dark acrylic windows.

A pang of longing echoes through Ruby. It's been nearly half a year since she'd lain in her own bed, held her own pillow or sat at her own desk.

Her father's lazy chair should be sitting in the living room, the big squeaking one she loved to lounge upside down on, and the hall closet with Yang's scarves that were in ten different shades of orange. That should be there too. Ruby swallows, her feet already leading her to the door.

Uncle Qrow's shadow consumes the entrance.

"What are you doing?"

She turns around and he's looking down at her, smiling faintly.

"I…" Ruby hesitates, gripping her left arm, "I thought it'd be nice…to see everything again."

His eyes shift toward the house, roving over the door's glass paneling, which is also veiled. And what was with that anyway? Her father and sister practically wilted without the sunlight. They'd never been ones to shut it out.

"Nothing for you in there."

Ruby blinks. "Huh? But that's the house."

"You heard me." He touches her shoulder. The smile is gone. "Now come on, let's go."

"But—"

"I said let's go." His hand clamps down and it kind of pinches really hard. Maybe he catches her wince, or the startled expression striking naked across her face, because he releases her a second later.

Uncle Qrow backs away half a step, sighing. Then he softens. He smiles.

"Sorry, kid, didn't mean to bite your head off. I should've clarified. To put it simply, I can't go in there."

"What?"

He gestures at himself.

"This body was created from my residual aura—the little bits and pieces of my soul. There wasn't a whole lot of it left by the time you got my stuff to the Grimm, so it's all a tad unstable. I guess you can think of me as one of those popsicle stick towers. Positive emotions act like glue, keeping the shape together, while negative ones, like spazzy limbs, cause imbalance and collapse."

As she tries to wrap her head around the explanation, he turns, spreading an arm out towards Patch.

"Residual aura only contains memories, y'know? And all the good ones it could find in mine were of this place. Out here. The house only serves to anchor the reconstruction. Make sense now?"

Ruby looks down, a frown light on her lips. Despite the eerie, unsatisfied chill along her bones, she supposes the reasoning is valid.

"How is any of this possible, Qrow?" she asks, lifting her gaze, "Is it…magic or something?"

To this, he laughs. "No more than I am."

That isn't convincing at all. She regards her uncle, thinking of his glinting eyes, his bright sharp teeth, that silent, haunting way he use to melt through the trees. Ruby doesn't find it a particularly long stretch. As a child, she had practically assumed it.

Still though, she won't pursue that line further. There are more important things bugging her.

"So you're saying…you only had bad memories of the house?"

Ruby remembers midnight cookies and video games and dancing in the kitchen. She remembers the living warmth of his side as he told her stories about dust and gods.

But then she also remembers the dim lamp of the living room, the unscrewed flask, the tapering cut along his cheekbone and I'm sorry, it was my fault, I'm sorry. Worry constricts Ruby's heart.

Uncle Qrow looks bemused. His face is flawless now, devoid of bruises or stress lines or that faded scar. Not a single mark of the past remains.

"I'm saying don't go looking for what you'll regret."

~~~

_You're seventeen when they send you off—you and your sister. The blood of four different rival clans are on your hands by then and the two of you are the scariest things lurking in Mistral's woods._

_You're damn good at killing and you've just about convinced yourself not to care. Your Semblance is even better and doesn't need convincing at all._

_But the tribe isn't satisfied. It accepts only perfection and there's a way to perfect everything and anything. Even killing._

_So you go to Beacon. With its three square meals and shiny floors and people who look at you like you're a wild animal stumbling out of its den._

_Your sister is hungry for the chance, espousing the tribe's maxim like it's unbreakable code. To be strong is to survive and she stresses the importance of this to you nightly, as if she's afraid you'll forget otherwise._

_She scoffs at the happy-go-lucky blonde and shrinking wallflower that are your teammates and you say nothing. You've always said nothing, because you're twins with one voice and that voice is hers._

_You're not here to be comrades. You're not here to be huntsmen._

_Even if secretly, you're kind of impressed by Taiyang's confidence and energy, despite how he's stubborn as hell and too fucking cheerful in the mornings. His ability to worm his way into people's affections is unbelievable. Exasperating._

_The idiot never stops trying to be your friend. And because you just don't have the stamina to keep fighting him off, you soon resign yourself to your fate. For all her talk, Raven does too, but you will only learn of this later on._

_As for Summer, all you really gather is that she obsesses over books and doesn't feel qualified to lead. She's quiet and that's fine, because you're quiet too. Oddly, you almost like her and perhaps more oddly still, she seems to like you._

_She even shares that she came to Beacon in hopes of making a difference one day. And though it sounds like the same typical bullshit you've been hearing from every other self-righteous moron around here, somehow you're sure she will. Something in her voice, you think. In her eyes._

_Still doesn't do much for you at the time. She's a girl you'll know for three years before you return to the tribe and all the thieving, brutality and bloody whips across the spine that come complimentary._

_You'll go back to killing and nothing will change save for the fact that your targets now will be hunters like Summer Rose, with her gentle smiles and radiant ideals. You can't afford to let her mean something. You doubt your sanity could handle that._

_And maybe that's why you became such a fucking mess in the end anyway._

~~~

The only entrance to the lab has a metal beam twisted around its handles like an immoveable pretzel. It won't budge no matter how they push or pry and so Yang resorts to smashing through a window instead.

They land directly in front of an intersection, splitting off into the east and west wings. Both pathways are abysmal passages of cobwebs, mold and peeled paint. All the bulbs are dead and the only reason they're not mired in pitch black is because of the drifting daylight wandering in through the cracks and seams. Yang's skin crawls at the thought that Ruby's in here somewhere all alone.

And she is here. Yang's certain of it, even if she doesn't know why.

Jaune, Ren and Nora choose the eastern corridor, while Yang faces the west. The air is moist and subtly rank. Millions of invisible eyes seem to rake their gazes down the length of her body. In hindsight, Yang can admit a part of her had been afraid.

But it's been a long time since she was that lost child stuck in the woods, in over her head and needing to be rescued.

_Time to grow up._ Something in her realizes. _Time to be brave. No one's coming this time to save you from the dark._

Yang takes a deep, steadying breath. She nods at the two figures lingering patiently at her sides.

Together, they step into the hallway.

~~~

_Team STRQ is no well-oiled machine. All of you stumble. All of you fall. Sometimes, you despise each other. Sometimes, you don't._

_But there's no denying you're a powerful group. By the latter half of your first year, you're taking on missions three times above your grade against monsters three times your size._

_As your reputation thrives, so does the adoration of your peers. Tai still holds the lion's share of the popularity, but you and Raven are no slouches in that department either._

_Suddenly, you're no longer the pair of savages trying to exist on the fringes of society. Your sister hates all the attention, but you don't mind the occasional fling here and again. Distraction is better than vegetating under the swill of your own thoughts after all._

_Besides, the change is for the best._

_Summer grows into her role like a hand into a glove. It had always been meant to fit her with time. There's a certain fearlessness to her steps these days, a certain strength behind her smile. She laughs more, mostly at the stupid things you get up to or the dumb jokes you crack._

_And you like making her laugh. It's not a half-bad sound._

_In fact, you wish she spent more time laughing and less time worrying about inconsequential things. Specifically, the extra bruises or scrapes you sustain over the rest of the team. You just want her to give you a break._

_"We can rotate spots," she insists one day at the clinic, after you've just finished shattering your arm in two different places during a mission, "It's not fair to keep making you cover the back flank like this."_

_You almost sigh. "No, I'll do it alone."_

_"Why?"_

_"You know why, Rose." You've told Tai and her both about your Semblance. They seem to think it's on par with a harmless little quirk, like you're the cause of frequently undone shoelaces or misplaced house keys. What a dream._

_Summer looks as if she wants to sigh too. "Because you're dangerous? To be avoided? I really don't like the way you think about yourself sometimes, Qrow."_

_Your jaw tightens. "It's just the truth."_

_"No, it's_ not," _Summer rises from her seat, "There has to be some kind of…maybe you can get help learning how to control it."_

_You snort. "Yeah, no such luck."_

_"Then at least let me share the position."_

_Her hands are flat on the mattress now. Fire shines in her gaze, flaring and determined._

_"Please," she says, "I can handle it. Whatever you think you'll do. Whatever you think you are."_

_There's half a beat in which you're speechless and almost uncomfortable, before you manage to compose your features into a frown._

_"Don't be a fool. You've no idea what you're asking."_

_"Haven't I?" her arms cross and then she's made up her mind, "I'll cover half of the back flank next time. Raven can take over center."_

_Your eyes widen, heart starting to pound. You are already beginning to imagine her death and the weight of it piling on your shoulders. How crushing it'd be._

_"No..._ no, _you don't understand. It amplifies when there's less people in range. Y-You're gonna be hit with the full brunt of it. I can't protect you from that."_

_"And you won't," Summer says, face softening ever so slightly, "You won't ever have to protect me from anything."_

_You don't realize how right she is until weeks later. In short, you're on your next mission. There are goliaths and dead villagers and Vale's steepest, most absurdly tall mountain. Your shirt's soaked black and stiff with Grimm blood when you feel your Semblance activate._

_There's no mistaking the feeling, like a million icy fingers skittering down your each and every rib. You don't even have time to open your mouth before the crunching noises at the mountain's peak follow, accompanied by a long bellowing groan. The whole ground seizes. Far up ahead, Tai and Raven both shout something incomprehensible and you reach blindly for Summer. You don't really know why._

_But her hand grabs yours just as the landslide begins._

_It's small, your mind registers, and rougher than expected. Summer squeezes your palm hard. Perhaps that had been your cue to look away. You don't._

_Her eyes crack open and then for the next eternity and a half there is nothing but light. The whitest, most blinding kind conceivable. You'll remember it for the rest of your goddamn days._

_When you finally get your vision back, the rampaging Grimm are gone. Along with a decent portion of the mountain. You stand frozen before the crater where they'd been. Summer pants beside you, a hand on her knee for support. Somehow, you find your voice._

_"Still sure I'm not better off alone out here?"_

_She stares, eyes glittering like polished coins. And she laughs, light as a bell echoing through the valley. It really is a beautiful laugh. Even then. Even as sad it sounds._

_"Oh, Qrow, we're all here alone," she says, hand still wrapped around your own._

_"We may as well live it together."_


	14. XIV.

_Your Semblance brings black, black hell to your second year._

_Everything ranging from stolen textbooks to dead flowers to kitchen grease fires in the middle of the night._

_For all the issues between you two, Raven knows what needs to be done. She steers clear, taking Tai along with her, and they leave you alone. It's the first time you can remember that Tai follows without protest, even if he looks sad and sorry for it._

_But you're not upset. You're not. This is what you know and you're used to it. In fact even, you're glad. That he's finally starting to understand what it means to be around someone like you._

_Summer is a different story._

_She makes digital scans of all her textbooks, folds origami for flowers and memorizes the locations of every fire extinguisher in the dormitory. She makes you a cape, maroon and rust like your eyes, and promises you in so many words that she's never going anywhere._

_Something in your heart squeezes, pulling in a way that you never learned how to deal with._

_"Why are you doing this?" you finally ask, in the sleepy quiet of a spring eve._

_Summer props her chin on a hand._

_"Doing what?"_

_"This," you gesture nonsensically, holding a corner of your trailing cape, "Sticking around. Being here…when I'm the way I am."_

_"Do I need a reason?"_

_You have no idea how to answer that, so you just shrug._

_"It'd make sense."_

_Summer smiles and it's full of fondness and moonlight and sorrow and pity._

_And something else too, but you can't believe that (you can't) and so, somewhere in the depths of you, you tell yourself you don't see it._

_"Maybe one day," she says, "I'll be brave enough to tell you."_

_~~~_

_In the early days, you hunted Grimm for the smaller towns and hamlets dotting the continents. Without the safety of the kingdoms, young, fresh-faced students were all they had-the ones who were never ready but had nothing to lose. The tasks were dangerous. The recompense meager._

_Yet the way they looked at you. With all the gratitude of the world, as if you were a hero instead of a savage forest child. You would remember that always._

_In your weakest moments, it made you think that perhaps this could_ work. _That maybe you could be a proper huntsmen and make all the gore and tarnish of your hands worth something._

_Sometimes, you had almost seen what Summer saw._

_But things change. You get too good, all four of you, and in the eyes of some, too special._

_Your missions by third year are almost exclusively for the blue bloods. It's funny—how the fame of your names grows inverse to the shittier and shittier quality of your assignments._

_Aristocrats and billionaires phone through to the headmaster's direct line, asking favors, asking for Team STRQ, who burns brighter and faster than any dying star. You clear nevermores from a Mistral lord's private island and play security at more Schnee company balls than you want to count._

_Raven starts muttering again that it's time to leave, but you don't think she means it as much as she use to. She mentions the tribe less and less these days. She looks at Tai more and more._

_Summer is frustrated, but never complains. She carries out her duties, because she still wants to help people. Still lives for it. Even if the people she helps don't deserve it._

_You're all hungry for something, but you don't know what._

_And then one day, the headmaster calls you in. He's towering, with hair the color of soapy water and brandishing a silver-headed cane. You could study his face forever and never guess his age. Or what he wants._

_He has the four of you sit._

_"I won't ask you to forgive me," is the first thing Oz ever says to you, "But I do hope someday that you can."_

_And then the world you knew fades away._

_~~~_

_You're twenty when you graduate Beacon and you know more than you should. There are ancient wheels turning in Remnant, shifting beneath its crusted surface. Heavenly treasures and Maidens and curses even more endlessly exhausting than your own._

_Just like your tribe did, the gods have plans._

_Or games. At least that's what Salem seems to view it all as. You will wonder much, much later if Oz ever does the same. If it's easier for him that way._

_But at the moment, you're twenty. And no matter what you've learned, you're still young and stupid as all hell and sometimes you think you can't die._

_Your sister is in love. She is getting married. You've tried and failed to imagine the day so many times that it's damn near surreal._

_"Shouldn't he…ask for my permission or something?"_

_Raven snorts, smacking your head. "I wasn't aware I'd become your property, little brother."_

_"Ugh, you know what I mean," half-heartedly, you swipe back, "I just…wanna make sure, okay? That he won't hurt you."_

_Raven sends a hard, stern look that tells you plainly to stop being an idiot. She can handle herself, which is true enough. You suppose it's really Tai then, who you're worried about getting hurt._

_"Don't think too much," Summer says, patching up your increasingly worn cape, "They'll be so good for each other. Just be happy, Qrow."_

_Just be happy._

_You consider this advice for a beat. You're a huntsman now and you're never returning to the tribe again. Vale is your home. Your real one._

_You suppose that's reason enough to be happy._

_~~~_

_Raven and Tai's wedding is in May. They choose a chapel near the outskirts of Vale, in a quaint little town called Patch. The air is warm and clean there, alive with the smells of saw grass and red blooms and creek water._

_It's beautiful. Or so Summer writes to you in her letters, which lay in an unread pile at your hospital bedside. You're in Mistral again, with a broken leg and an inch deep gash in your side._

_It's infected and you spend most of your waking hours trying not to scream your throat hoarse. The rest of your time is spent in your dreams, where the glowing rubble of the village lay. The one Salem had fancied. The one you couldn't stop her from taking._

_A bare-foot girl in a red dress had waved to you at the gateway. Her hair was like cinders in the grate. You heard her sing, slow and sad, as you passed her by._

__Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, everything goes, because everything must…

_She couldn't have been older than fifteen. You would only realize this at the end, when she was standing at that cliff's edge, stained in tears and soot, face cut up like cracked porcelain. Your lungs burned with inhaled smoke, your ribs were bruised and you're down to one working leg._

_But you reached for her, whispering, keeping your voice as soft and free of pain as you could. You feverishly channel different people—Raven, Summer, Tai. You imagine Oz and his measured voice. His infinite capacity for patience and control._

_"It's okay now," you say, "Please, come here. Take my hand. It's okay. You're going to be okay."_

_The fear in her eyes thaws slightly. She inches forward on shivering limbs, ghostly hand rising. You can feel the ice of her flesh brush against your fingertips. She trusts you. You think in that moment you're going to save her._

_You're wrong._

_You feel your Semblance hiss through your skin like a spray of glass shards, a lick of wildfire._

_The ground beneath the girl collapses. She never screams. There's only a gasp. A reverent noise of soft surprise._

_She drops into the darkness and it is you who wakes up screaming._

_Somewhere far away, your sister gets married. They waited for you for hours. You had promised to be there. Summer finally breaks mission protocol and calls your scroll._

_It trills at your tableside, but you don't hear it. You don't hear anything really._

_Nothing, save for a song._

_~~~_

_After a month, you finally recover enough to return. Raven accepts your apology without actually hearing it. She looks at your eyes with something like bewilderment. Something like concern. You almost think she's going to hug you, but she doesn't._

_"You're an asshole, y'know," she mumbles, "Missing my wedding day."_

_"Well, maybe you're both moving along too fast for me," you joke feebly, eyes lingering over your sister's torso and the small bump there. You're going to be an uncle. A cursed, death-ridden thing like you. For the first time, you wonder if you should even meet this child at all. If you should ever know her face._

_Your stomach dips. You feel sick suddenly and have to turn away._

_"Where are you going?"_

_"To see Oz."_

_Raven catches your wrist._

_"Tell me what happened."_

_"I already did."_

_You pull out of her grip and keep walking. Oz has made you an offer. One he hasn't made in a long time. He can turn you into something better, swifter and spread your eyes across the country. You will never be rid of your misfortune, but maybe you can outpace it and that's a deal good enough to take._

_So you enter his tower and leave with only two thoughts in mind._

_Oz knows fucking magic and his sense of irony isn't lacking._

_Never do you expect Raven to follow you. Not until you're perched on a branch during reconnaissance one night and she lands right next to you. Jet black and sleek. A tad bigger than you are._

_She loves the feeling and you can't blame her. The Branwen tribe has always lived in the mountaintops, but the weightlessness of your body, the crisp, elusive smell of the sky—this is a type of freedom neither of you have known before._

_Ozpin sends you out into Remnant. You act as his eyes, one each to his left and right. You spy on Salem's forces and you witness horrible, horrible things. With her Semblance, Raven sees even more._

_She sees and sees until she sees too much. Until it breaks her apart so very quietly._

_~~~_

_Yang is born during a sunset. Plump and pink and wailing. Her hair is a golden sea._

_Raven doesn't want to hold her. She's gotten more and more sullen in the past few months and looks at the baby as if it's something strange. Summer ends up coaxing an upset Tai outside, their daughter squirming in his arms._

_It's you who's left standing alone in a corner of the room. Raven rolls to her side, staring at the wall._

_"Do you ever think about the tribe?"_

_"Not really."_

_"It must be hard now. Without us."_

_You grunt, feeling the hairs on your nape stiffen._

_"Less raids."_

_"He can't win, you know," Raven says suddenly, "Not against her."_

_You stare, letting the silence rise and rise. And all this time, she never turns your way. You should've turned her around, should've forced her gaze. You'll regret that you didn't for the rest of your life._

_"Don't be an idiot," you say, a forced laugh abrading the stillness, "You're tired. Get some rest and hold your daughter in the morning."_

_For a long, long moment, Raven doesn't reply. Then…_

_"She looks like Tai. I'm so glad she looks like Tai."_

_Night comes, morning follows and then your sister is gone._

_~~~_

_You search for Raven. You have a good idea where. You leave everything, everything behind, but in the end it is still her who finds you. Tribal beads clatter about her neck and a carved Grimm mask sways at her thigh._

_She's flecked in blood, lips dry and for the first time in your life, she looks desperate._

_"Come back with me," both of you say._

_"We perish under Ozpin. We'd never survive."_

_"Your daughter needs you."_

_Her mouth twitches. "Needing me will only make her weak. And I've told you before, Qrow, what happens to the weak."_

_You can only stare at her, feeling cold and helpless. You realize with a dawning, creeping horror that this must be your fault. Your Semblance somehow. It has to be. Look what you've done to your sister…_

_Raven offers her hand, her eyes paling when you don't take it._

_"Brother, please," she says, "Please."_

_You don't move. You're twins with one voice._

_One voice…_

_"Don't make me leave you," Raven whispers and there are tears gleaming down her face._

_She is your sister and she loves you. But you get in her way. She wishes you were stronger._

_And you make her feel guilty._

_Raven vanishes in a flap of wings, in a breath of darkness._

_~~~_

_For the next month and a half, there is no Qrow Branwen. There can't be. You are only one part of a whole._

_So you wander in a haze, barely eating or sleeping, downing whiskey like water. Drink hits you hard, helps you forget, and so you let it in let it in let it in._

_Tai is a mess. He keeps seeing Raven in every wild shadow, every shape across the window. When you pick her up, Yang rubs tiny hands over your eyes, comforted somehow by their color. She's holding on somewhere, to those wisps of Raven that will ultimately disperse into smoke one day. You can't look at either of them for long._

_And the whole while, Summer gathers the pieces. She feeds Yang and plays with her and rocks her to sleep. She loves her with all the fathomless weight of eternity. You are so awed._

_And so ashamed._

_Oz assigns you more missions. In his own way, he is sorry. You're grateful for how long they last, how dangerous and far away they are. Sometimes, you are gone for weeks, months even._

_And the day arrives when Oz tells you this next one will be for years. He says you can decline, maybe expects you to. You don't._

_The house seems deserted when you gather enough courage to return. You figure they must've taken Yang to the park or something. It's for the best, you think, that you don't say goodbye. You suck at it and they're better off without you anyway._

_So of course, Summer is waiting in the foyer._

_"Don't leave," she says simply._

_"What is this, Rose?" you sigh, feeling tired and vaguely irritable, "Were you hanging around in the dark waiting for me?"_

_She ignores you._

_"It wasn't your fault," she says, and you try hard not to flinch. Petite as she is, Summer fills the whole space somehow. Her cloak's white enough to burn in your vision._

_"Stop lying."_

_"You can learn to control it, Qrow. Don't just give…" Summer stops, her mouth pursing, "You're being selfish, you know."_

_You laugh. It's a barking, ugly sound. A little part of you knows she's right, but that doesn't make you want to lash out any less._

_"Look who's talking."_

_"What?"_

_"You could've retired like Tai," you hear yourself say, "You could've stopped being a huntress a long time ago, but you never did. You can't let it go. Not for anyone. So don't lecture_ me _about being selfish."_

_You don't know what the fuck you're saying. Summer's face is bone white. Naked white. Her face crumples and you_ hate _yourself._

_"Sorry," you say, blankly, "I didn't mean…I'm sorry."_

_Then you try to hurry past. You almost do, when a hand grabs the side of your cape._

_"Wait."_

_Something old and frayed finally snaps inside you._

_"Enough already!" you twist around, teeth clenched, eyes flashing,"Stop being a fool! Aren't you afraid?"_

_She drags down your wrists with shocking strength. Her dark hair lies against the bridge of her nose, her mouth a fierce, solid line._

_"Never," Summer whispers, "Never, okay?"_

_Her hands squeeze slowly, the nails digging in, as if she can make the words sink in by force. You can feel her frame harden, her resolve stretch down like old roots._

_"You're not wrong. I wish you were, but you're not wrong. I can't let go. Not yet," she pauses once, steadying, "I need to know that things can change."_

_Her head bows, cool forehead resting against the center of your rib cage. She's never been so close before and you stand there, utterly frozen._

_"I don't have to be a myth reborn. I have no use for a legacy. I just want to make a difference, Qrow. Even if it's a small and simple one. Even if I'm not there to see it grow."_

_Her breath flows through the thin membrane of your shirt, touching your bare skin._

_You look at your shoes. The words slip through with a mind of their own._

_"I know you will."_

_Because you still think, in a lot of ways, that she's invincible. Summer doesn't move, but somehow you can feel her pressing closer. You can picture the faint, sad curve of her smile._

_You're so incredibly fucked._

_"Don't leave," Summer says, "Stay here with us. With me."_

_She looks up, pinning you down with those brave, terrifying eyes. You're both alone, they seem to say. You may as well live it together._

_You understand at last, what she meant by that all those years ago. And maybe in some way, you always had._

_The phantom voices of the tribe flood your ears, laughing, mocking, Raven's whispering above all that you are weak. That you want things you don't deserve and then they break. They send your mind careening past the crown of Summer's head and down that hall which suddenly stretches for miles._

_Your Semblance stirs._

_The carved mirror hanging on the end wall lurches. Spidery cracks burst into being across the surface, running jagged down the sides of your face. They splinter Summer into a million fragments._

_You gasp and pull yourself free._

_Summer jolts, eyes widening like a doe's. Confusion and hurt glitter in them like stars in the dead of space._

_"Qrow—"_

_"I can't," you choke out. They're the hardest words you'll ever have to say. "I'm sorry."_

_You run away. You run away._

_~~~_

_Six years go by before you see her again. Your skin grows dark with scar tissue. Your cape tattered with rips. You honestly should have it replaced, but you know that won't ever happen._

_Summer tries her best to keep in contact, sending letters dutifully and care packages whenever she can get an address out of Ozpin. She gives you updates, nags you not to drink and sends you photos of Yang, who gets more feisty by the day._

_The kid is an endless ball of energy, babbling three-hundred miles per minute whenever you manage to sneak in a call. A little firecracker really. Tai's always trying to get her to calm down, but you don't mind. She'll be a force to reckon with when she's grown. This you're certain of._

_"Come home, man," Tai says, more and more frequently, "I really think you should come home."_

_You're almost amazed he still considers Patch your home. You're certainly pathetically relieved. Sometimes, you even wonder if he's asking on Summer's behalf, as the two of you never speak over the phone. Some wounds are too tender still, even for her._

_But you do come back. Eventually. When Oz tells you with frank abruptness one day that he's sending an airship for you. A mission in Vale with a partner. One of Salem's operatives. You have a few days. Go home._

_Go home._

_You're not one to disobey._

_There's a blonde tornado of a welcome when you step onto that porch, little hands that never forgot your eyes. Tai throws an arm around your shoulders and grins._

_Summer walks out last. Like you all, her face is a bit older, her form a bit fuller. A voice in you echoes (still beautiful still beautiful)._

_There is a child clinging to her skirt. Snow skin and dark hair. Glittering, silver eyes. Summer rests a hand on her back, nudging her forward gently._

_"Ruby, this is your Uncle Qrow."_

_The girl blinks at you, pale timid face slightly tucked down. You stare back. Tai comes up next to them, settles a hand in her hair and even though there isn't a trace of him in this child, you suddenly understand. Summer glances at Tai and smiles softly._

__Good, _something in you whispers._ That's good enough for me. __

_"Hey there," you kneel down, offering your hand. She looks at it, unsure for a beat, before taking it shyly. She smiles when you do and gods, you have no idea then—no idea at all—just how much this kid will destroy you._

_"Nice to meetcha, little rose."_

_~~~_

_How can you describe the way it ends?_

_The partner on your mission is Summer. She is after the man who killed her parents._

_He's an unknown face, Once an urchin boy fostered beneath Salem's cruel, corrupting reign. He doesn't remember Summer's parents and he raves that he's going to kill her. Summer's eyes glow with light. She says it is he who is going to die._

_Both of them are right._

_There are wooden dolls. Limp puppets without strings. The man has two locks of hair tangled in their stitching. He squeezes one of them and Summer crumples with a sharp cry. You see red._

_You charge him with Harbinger roaring open in your hand. The man grapples for the other doll, but your Semblance spikes then and you almost grin, thinking he'll drop Summer's in his haste._

_But he drops yours instead._

_A pen knife slides from a sleeve and your blood curdles. You spin around blindly, cold all over with terror, and Summer yells, "No! Keep going, keep going! Forget about me! Kill him, Qrow, kill him now!"_

_I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU. She screams. I'LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU IF YOU DON'T KEEP GOING._

_So you do. You kill a man without ever learning his name. He stabs the blade into the doll's chest with fanatic glee. He's howling even as he expires, but you don't sit around to watch._

_Summer's cloak is red and sticky. She lays strewn on the forest floor, as if she really were a broken doll, hanging off your arms when you gather her up._

_She blinks large glassy eyes at you while you fumble with your scroll, trying to stem the bleeding. Words jumble together in your mouth, snatched away with every white second of panic. It is only when she reaches up to touch your face that you notice you're crying._

_Summer smiles. She apologizes for what she said._

_"I would forgive you anything," she promises, voice low and heavy, "Always."_

_"Don't talk anymore," you whisper._

_But when has Summer ever listened to you?_

_"I couldn't let them go," she rasps, "I tried for so many years."_

_She laughs, breath catching. "It was such a selfish choice to make. You tell my girls, alright? Not to ever be like me."_

_"You can tell them yourself." You're shaking, voice cracked and dry. Don't leave them. You want to scream. Don't leave_ me.

_"Shhh," Summer leans her head against your arm, soothing the quakes, "It's okay."_

_You're going numb. Suddenly and detachedly, you realize it's too late. That this is how things end. Time cannot be wasted on denial. It cannot be about_ you. _A daze-like calm sweeps across your thoughts, cocooning your mind._

_"What can I do?"_

_Something flickers in Summer's gaze. Her lips curve weakly and she closes her eyes._

_"…Tell me a story?"_

_You swear all your words are lost, shriveled and emptied into the nothingness. Summer will die in the silence. She will die and then be gone. You recall a young girl singing._

__…everything goes, because everything must…

_It is clear very suddenly._

_"Did you know," you whisper, "that we are made from the dust?"_

_~~~_

_Tai shuts down. He sits in his room after the funeral in such unmoving silence that you keep checking just to make sure he isn't swinging feet first off the rafters._

_Yang cries herself to sleep. You hold her best you can, comforting her with lies. You're fucking terrified the whole time, thinking your Semblance could cave in the roof or catch her bedding on fire. You don't know what you're doing._

_All you want, really, is to drink yourself into oblivion._

_In the smallest crevice of your thoughts, the skies look inviting. A leap of wings and magic away. Poof goes your problems. Poof goes your pain._

_"Uncle Qrow?"_

_You blink, reeling back into your own head. Ruby tugs on the hem of your cape, peering up at you. Your stomach flips. She doesn't understand where her mother has gone, no matter how you've tried to explain it and you silently brace yourself for more questions._

_"Where are you going?"_

_You blink again. Ruby points with a chubby finger at the door you hadn't even registered you'd opened, spilling in the stars and the leaves of the ash tree._

_"Oh," you close it, staring for a second through the glass, "Nowhere."_

_"Really?"_

_You look down into her eyes. The little trace of hesitation there. The fear and trust and something almost akin to grief blazing in those twin silver flames. Out of nowhere, your heart breaks. Snapping in half like a brittle twig. You cannot, you realize, turn your back on those eyes again._

_"Really," you say, hugging her close, "I'll be here, little rose."_

_Always._


	15. XV.

**XV.**

~~~

Ruby has questions. They've haunted her dreams since Kuroyuri. She's become painfully aware of the preciousness of time—every delicate grain vanishing into the fathomless sea.

But that strange, smiling face, with her uncle's skin and her uncle's eyes—she is afraid that he won't have the answers she needs.

So the words stay latched inside Ruby, striking at the bars and rattling their chains.

When did you start drinking?

And what was that song?

The one you always hummed?

Why didn't you ever tell me?

About your Semblance?

Or Ozpin?

Or anything?

~~~

The double doors at the end of the east wing are locked. It takes two body slams from Jaune and Ren each, and a follow-up swing from Magnhild to smash them open.

Weapons brandished, they charge about four feet into the room before stopping dead. The first thing Jaune registers is that the area is clean. Like incredibly.

The walls are gleaming slates of stainless steel and the floor is polished concrete. There is a stale, almost nauseating kind of sterilization to the air. Three high-set rows of fluorescent bulbs flicker on, motion sensors activated.

A giant, rectangular machine towers over them, welded down at the center, the body as hard and sinewy as a giant's back. Two glass panels are mounted to the front, small spider cracks webbing their corners, and most striking of all, a spindly mechanical arm juts from the side, the blades of the claw glinting and hanging like a dead thing. An inexplicable chill runs down Jaune's neck. Ren and Nora come to staggering halts at his side.

"What…is that?" the latter whispers.

Jaune walks up to it. He can see his own reflection glinting back at him from the obsidian metal. Flashes of the Atlas guards reel by in his head—their talk of underhand deals, Atlesian tech and residual aura.

Then all of a sudden, Jaune knows what he's looking at.

"It's the machine Lionheart mentioned," he says, maybe to his teammates, maybe to no one, "The one that he was going to—"

Nora yelps, nearly making him jolt out of his skin. She's wandered over to Jaune's left, standing before the pillar-like base. Something is etched into the metal, a diagram or picture of some kind that's mostly hidden behind her head. Jaune moves forward, shifting so he can look around her.

His blood runs cold.

He'd only see it for a few minutes at most and that was clouded still by the pump of his adrenaline at the time, the crazy awareness of his own trembling, and that raging mantra in his head which had only been get away get away get away from her.

There's no mistaking it though.

"I-Is that a Grimm?" Nora is saying, pointing at the etching, "Why would that be…"

She trails off, but it's not as if Jaune needs her to finish.

"Can I see?" He nudges Nora aside without waiting for a response.

On closer inspection, he grows even more certain that it's the monster he saw. Even if the image, while professionally rendered, seems almost archaic. Like something chiseled slowly into the wall of a temple or printed on the worn pages of a fairy-tale.

An inscription scrawls down next to the Grimm from both sides, as if enclosing it in a cage of words.

_An ancient, deadly and exceedingly rare species of Grimm that has only ever been recorded along the outskirts of Mistral. Now possibly extinct. Distant relations to Geist and the more dangerous Nuckelavee._

_Known for its ability to find and extract residual aura, reconstructing almost perfect replications of the original owner's memories. Not much residual aura is necessary for this reconstruction either and it can supposedly acquire attributes of the original owner simply by sweeping through the same areas._

_Utilization of this ability was its preferred hunting technique. Unlike normal Grimm, it often stalked villages for years following disasters or attacks of high casualty numbers._

_The exact approach remains undocumented, but it is believed to have lured its prey with the images and sounds of impossible dreams. For example, the glimpse of a perfect future or a golden past. Most commonly, the face of a deceased loved one._

_Perhaps for this reason, it was often prioritized as a target by the huntsmen academies._

_No official name was ever declared, but local legends and village lore eventually denoted the species by its most popular title._

_The Crone of Greedy-Eyed Mistral._

Shiver after shiver races down the length of Jaune's spine. He reads the entire passage a second time to make sure he's understanding it all correctly, before his eyes rack down the machine's structure again-the jagged, rickety shape, the claw and the two wide glass panels that were reminiscent now, at second glance, of a mask.

_So Atlas modeled this after…_

Jaune can't think of how any of the kingdoms' councils would have approved the construction of something like this. He's not sure he wants to know if they even had.

"Why is it hunting Ruby?" Nora asks, nearly making him jump, "There are easier targets aren't there? The outer villages aren't even walled."

"It must be after her for a specific reason."

"And using Qrow as bait?"

Jaune's eyes narrow. "Maybe, but…"

No, that didn't make sense. It had had Ruby steal Qrow's effects—something it probably hadn't needed to do if it could simply absorb his residual aura from places like Oniyuri and Kuroyuri.

His brows knit together. "…it might be after something of Qrow's too. Along with Ruby. For different reasons."

He racked his brain, trying to recall that box of Qrow's effects the day they'd been seized by Haven. Lionheart had wanted them so this machine could trace the last few locations Qrow had been, especially following the fall of Beacon. He'd been searching for Professor Ozpin.

But what would a Grimm need to know any of that for?

Jaune touched the side of the machine. It was warmer than he thought it'd be, as if it'd just been used. As if…

"Jaune," Ren's soft voice drifts from his right. He's standing slightly in the shadows, almost beneath the claw, the profile of his face is pale and tight.

Jaune blinks, exchanging glances with Nora before hurrying over. There's a third panel he hadn't caught from his previous angle, bolted down onto the machine. And unlike the other two, the display is on.

ERROR: AURA LEVEL INSUFFICIENT

Jaune stares at it dumbly, until Ren touches his shoulder. "Over there," he says, pointing at the claw. Up close, there are red sparks coming out of its ends. A automated scanner most likely, set to harvest aura from whatever is placed underneath it.

His heart sinks to his knees.

"Shit," Jaune whispers and Nora sucks in a shocked, regretful breath. Ren stares at the ground.

There's a pile of rubble strewn beneath the claw, almost indistinguishable from debris. The flask has been melted completely in half, while the scythe has shattered into hundreds of jagged, glittering pieces. Wood shards from the snapped handle litter the floor, scattered among mangled gears.

And the cape they had seen Ruby cling to so tightly, that she had torn an entire roof open for is in shreds.

"It failed," Ren says softly, "It couldn't detect any of Qrow's residual aura. Not even after all this. It couldn't find him, Jaune."

_And neither will Ruby._

The words go unspoken, left there to linger. They go whispering through the room, over the parts and the pieces, eating up all that remained of Qrow Branwen in that cold and quiet place.

~~~

What were you so afraid of?

Why couldn't you look at me?

Were you ever happy?

Did I make you sad?

~~~

_When you open your eyes, Ruby is gone._

_You're kneeled on the floor of the darkened house. Wind weeps outside and the loose leaves flap against the windows, desperate as moth wings. An encroaching storm._

_You stand. Blinking. Ruby is gone._

_"Kiddo?"_

_Hurrying through the living room, you peek into a shadowed kitchen before making your way upstairs. Worry is trying to surge up through your head, but you feel it at an odd distance. As if it's being tampered like a wet cloth over flames._

_It's raining now. You can hear the drops hitting the roof. When did it start storming at all? Will it start thundering too? Ruby hates thunder. Where did she go? You need to find her. She must be so scared._

_Where did she go?_

_You call for her, voice vibrating across the husk of walls and furniture. You tell her not to be afraid. That you're here._

_You climb the last step. A silhouette stands in the hallway._

_A woman's, with shoulders taut and loose fists at her sides. Hair thick and wild and doused in darkness. That ghost-white skin, that sharp expression you have never been able to bring yourself to hate. No matter how lost it is. No matter how cruel._

_Your heart starts to pound, a hammering thrum in your ears. The muggy sense of calm disperses like smoke in the wind._

_"…Raven?" you whisper._

_"You should stop worrying about her, Qrow."_

_"Wha—"_

_"She won't be here."_

_Hot flaks of rage spark in your chest. Alive and roaring within a heartbeat. "The fuck are you talking about? Where is she then?"_

_But Raven is silent, just like she was all those years ago, because she never ever has anything to say when she ought to and that makes you angrier. You reach out to wrench her forward by the collar, to shake a goddamn response out of her._

_"Hurry up and answer me, you-!"_

_Raven's hair is golden. Gleaming like a sun-washed sea. Her eyes are pools of lilac and suddenly it's Yang's face instead looking up at you—older and harder and sadder than you recognize._

_"What power do you think you have left?" she says and you nearly drop her, because this can't be right. It can't be. Yang is only…she's only nine…and more importantly, you still don't have your answer._

_"Where is Ruby?"_

_"Nowhere you can go."_

_You release her. You don't understand, but it doesn't matter. It's clear you'll have to find the kid on your own._

_You turn and tear back down the stairs, heading down the hallway and into the living room. The front door is sealed shut like the mouth of a slumbering beast. It's so dark outside that you can't see anything through the glass._

_"It's over now."_

_Tai is leaned against the kitchen archway, arms crossed. His face is gaunt and his eyes are red and you remember this all too, too well. He regards you sadly, as if you're the broken one instead._

_"Give her up, Qrow," he says, "You can't be with her anymore."_

_There is a moment where you don't understand. Where you don't remember._

_And then there is one where you do._

_Beacon falling in a torrent of flames. The Grimm, the screams, Ozpin's severe and ageless eyes._

_You remember following Ruby to Mistral. Traveling those dark, thick-smelling woods that have stalked your dreams for decades._

_The scorpion with his taunts, his laughing, his madness ugly as a scar. Perhaps that's the only real way to follow where Salem leads. He reminds you of the one you had killed all those years ago. The faunus you will never have a name for._

_"I'm dying," you say._

_"You're dead."_

_It is with an ease and finality that the real Taiyang would've never had the stomach for. You stand there staring at him. Through him._

_You see Summer at the end, bleeding out in your arms. Her shining, frightened eyes and the red tinge of her hair. You see Ruby's pale little face._

_You'd wanted to tell those eyes that you're sorry. You had never stopped being sorry. That every time you'd looked at her was a moment you reminded yourself that you could have nothing._

_But Ruby asked you to stop. She said you were hurting her and she asked you stop and so you stopped. Because that was the one thing you could never do. Not ever._

_Even if she was always hurting you._

_"You hid it so well, Qrow," Tai says quietly, almost kindly, "The pain she brought you. All those times you had to look into that face or those eyes.."_

_Tai straightens, hands falling to his sides as he walks into the living room. He looks so cruel then, so unlike the Tai you know._

_"You've done enough for her, haven't you? More than I or anyone else ever could have. Consider your debts paid. Consider yourself free."_

_Summer was smiling. She touched the edge of your mouth, trailing red down your chin. She hoped you would know that she had loved you. For many, many years, she had loved you. That a part of her still did._

_And that no one should end up like her again. Not able to move forward._

_Not able to let go._

~~~

Uncle Qrow offers her the world.

With the snap of his fingers, he can produce a game console in the grass and a plate of sweets on a tree stump. The day fades into night at his command and the stars wink open one by one.

A crown of roses settles over her head. He smiles and tucks the hair from her face. She wishes he would call her little rose, but he never does. He never calls her little rose again.

He offers stories and corny jokes and doesn't want to talk about Dad or Yang.

"Where's your cape?" she asks, gesturing at his bare shoulders, receiving only a shrug in reply.

"Ditched it."

Ruby looks at him, heart skipping another beat.

For as long as she can remember, he'd never gone anywhere without that cape—tattered and worn through as it was. He'd told her once that it'd been a gift from someone he'd known long ago. Someone who had changed his life forever.

The words leap out of their own will. 

"Who was it? Your cape, I mean. Who gave it to you?"

Perhaps it's her imagination, but the corners of Qrow's lips seem to purse.

"Why?"

"I just want to know."

"It's not important."

"Yes," Ruby says and is inexplicably certain of it, "it is."

They stare at each other and it's very silent suddenly. All things cease—the crickets and birds and frogs, even the wind along the trees. Qrow's eyes flicker and there's something huge looming in them, something with claws and crackling skin and—

He smiles.

"Come with me."

Without waiting for an answer, Qrow begins walking, leaving her to blink at his back, before her legs remember how to move. He leads her into the forest, past the winding trail leading to the cliffhead. She wonders for a moment, if her mother's grave is up there still. Even here.

After a few more minutes, they stop at a granite wall, a towering spectacle with stones dark as dried blood. The opening of a cave gapes wide at the base and Ruby is reminded immediately of the Grimm. The abysmal shape of its mouth.

Qrow turns to her at last.

"Let's get out of here."

Ruby is quiet. Stock-still. He keeps talking.

"I know you have questions. Don't think I didn't notice. But I can't answer them here. Not in this world where all I am is a memory rebuilt from a fragment. This tunnel will lead us out. It'll take us to someone who can make me whole."

"Who?" Ruby manages to croak. Qrow's smile stretches and there is nothing kind about it, nothing with a glimpse of love in it.

_"The Queen."_

The very space between them seems to shudder. Ice seeps down through Ruby's veins. Her mouth is suddenly dry. She has no idea who he's talking about, but every fiber within her screams that she does not want to know.

"It's so dark."

"I'll be here," Qrow replies, "And if you come with me, we'll be together again."

_Always._

"Isn't that what you wanted?"

Ruby's breath sticks in her throat. Her hands close into shivering fists. The cool grass sways with the spring breeze, snickering for a moment before going silent. The world is so still, so muted. As if it too is watching.

"Okay."

She pretends not to catch that split second, in which Qrow's grin stretches like a starving wolf's.

"Good girl."

"If you will answer me one thing."

He eyes her. Shrugs.

"If I can."

"You will," Ruby says, "If you're really my uncle then…you'll know. Please. This one thing. Tell me the truth and I'll…I'll go with you. Anywhere you want."

The smile fades. Shortening by the fraction of a centimeter.

"Very well. Ask."

She breathes, wanting desperately to squeeze her eyes shut and somehow managing to suppress the urge. She looks into his eyes, forcing the words out before they can shrivel up and die inside of her.

 

"Did I hurt you? All those times when I was little…when you couldn't look at me…and even when you could…was I hurting you?"

 

Qrow stares. There is a beat. Then two. Then three.

And he laughs. Head thrown back, a sound that vibrates through Ruby's core and claws open the silence. His teeth are very sharp, glinting beneath the shade like knives.

"Is that all? No offense, kid, but what a ridiculous question," his voice teeters on the edge of mockery, "Of course not. You're just a child. How could you have done that? What could I have _ever_ seen in you that would've hurt me?"

He laughs again and all the while, Ruby gazes into him.

"Is that the truth?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Qrow reaches out, palm up. "Now come. No need to be afraid."

Ruby is silent, eyes wandering over his crown, into the pitch black tunnel beyond. Then she takes his hand, brushes the scarred knuckles with her thumb and presses it close to her heart.

"You know I really did love you, Uncle Qrow. You stayed even when no one else could. It's funny. I came here even though I was begged not to, even though I knew better. I saw a monster rip the heart out of a man and swallow it down as if it were nothing. I watched it all and still I let it live. I let it act as it pleased and did whatever it commanded, all because it was going to give you back. I don't know what I'd been expecting really. Maybe that, somehow, everything would return to how it was. Or maybe deep down, I just wanted to pretend a little longer. I wanted to have this memory of you one last time."

Qrow tilts his head, regarding her as if she's some silly little thing.

"What are you talking about?" he smiles blankly, "I'm not a memory, kiddo. I'm right here."

Ruby releases his hand and backs away. She shakes her head, looking him in the eye. The tears spill free and they burn down her skin.

"No," Ruby whispers, "you're not here anymore."

She runs.


	16. XVI.

**XVI.**

~~~

At the end of the corridor is a sprawling, cobweb-ridden wall. A pile of granite and plaster sits in a corner, where the ceiling has collapsed. Daylight and cloudless sky spill down through the opening. 

Yang edges a bit closer, more out of need for the fresh air than actual curiosity. It is clear enough her sister’s not down this way. Dust specks swirl in the single column of light. 

It isn’t as warm as she thought it’d be. 

A chill skitters its frigid legs down Yang’s arms and when she exhales, a plume of white breath escapes her lips, dissolving in the air. Her eyes widen. Something feels wrong.

She’s climbing up through the hole before she knows why. 

The roof is flat and normal enough, dilapidated and moss-covered like everything else about the building. In the distance, Yang sees the white huddles of the protest groups at the gateway and the elegant shape of Mistral further out. Anima’s forests taper into the horizon, vast swathes of land that make even the kingdom look tiny.

In the face of it all, Yang feels suddenly insignificant and alone. She has an intimate understanding then, of why Ruby is afraid to let go. To step beyond the only safety she’s ever known. 

_But what about me?_ A quiet little voice asks. _What about me, Ruby? I’m still here, aren’t I?_

Something flutters behind her, landing on loose tiles.

A sharp caw.

Yang turns and sees a raven.

“Wha…” she starts blankly, but the bird caws again. It tilts its sleek head down, pecking the space between its legs. It looks at her for a long beat.

Yang runs towards it. Some gut-deep feeling raises her hands, fingers flexed, and she tries to catch the creature. Just for a second, a moment ( _just once, please, please_ ).

It’s too fast, almost phasing through her grasp. All she closes around is a feather, before the bird glides back into the woods, disappearing into darkness.

Yang staggers and nearly tumbles off the roof entirely. Her heart pounds as if she’s run three marathons back-to-back and then her knees buckle. The feather is damp and gleaming. 

It mocks her and she wants to tear it to shreds. Wants to burn it to smithereens. Instead, it slips out of her hand and falls.

Onto the door that hadn’t been there a second ago.

A gasp gets stuck in Yang’s throat. 

It’s blacker than the thickest night she knows, with a knob that’s a burning, almost creepy shade of red. Yang scrambles back to her feet, tilting her head at crazy angles to see if it’s simply an unhinged fixture, but can’t be certain. For all intents and purposes, it looks like it’s actually been built into the roof of the building.

_What the hell?_

Unease roils in the pit of Yang’s stomach. 

She chews her lip, before sliding out her scroll.

“Hey, you guys want to come up here? I think I found something.”

~~~

“Huh, that’s one poorly-made design. I can’t believe the hinges haven’t rusted shut yet.”

“Yeah, and why only over this area and why this enormous size? A hatch would’ve worked way better construction-wise.”

Yang rolls her eyes, glancing behind her minutely. “I called you up here because I wanted back-up, not so you could criticize the architecture.”

“Back-up? Why? Are you going to _open_ it?”

She shrugs. “Well, _yeah._ You guys couldn’t find Ruby either and this is the only place left in the west wing we haven’t checked.”

No further arguments made. Yang takes this as a sign to crouch down and take the knob in hand.

~~~

The grass is flaking off. 

It’s flaking off like old paint peeling from a wall. Ruby tries her best not to look, putting all her focus on placing one foot in front of the other. Everything in Patch is wilting. Trees, flowers, the songbirds and beetles. The air fills with smoke and bleeds out ash.

Her mind is buzzing white with panic. 

_FlOwer ChILD_

_floWer chILD_

The sky is as dark as a bruise and eyes bead out from the clouds. Ruby’s heart is in her throat, as she forces down a scream. Screaming won’t help her. She needs to remember that.

With her Semblance blazing in full, the winding trail dissolves into the creek and then into the field. She sprints through it, not daring to peer down at the harsh, hissing noises coming from beneath her feet. 

Ruby doesn’t know where she’s running. Doesn’t know if there’s a place _to_ run.

But she remembers that cave, as black and bottomless as the mouth of a snake, and knows no matter what ( ** _no matter what_** ) she cannot be taken back there.

In the distance, a soft shape comes into view. 

Ruby’s eyes widen. 

The cabin.

The shades are still drawn, the windows still lightless and it sits in the middle of this crumbling world like a relic long forgotten. It’s also the only door Ruby has left to open. 

With a leap and a skid, Ruby races up the path. Her boots scramble up the porch steps, reaching for the knob.

_Get me out of here,_ her mind chants, senselessly, endlessly, _Get me out of here, please…_

~~~

Somewhere between the realms of illusion and reality, two sets of fingers reach for a door, touching the metal of the knob. 

And somewhere between the realms of illusion and reality, the skin of their palms roast upon contact.

They scream in unison, yanking their arms back. One curses and the other is still.

One is checked on by concerned hands and the other flattens herself against the door, lips white and heart shuddering.

_That wasn’t very polite, Ruby._

A monster stands at the foot of the porch. It still wears the face of someone she had loved.

_Look at what you’ve done._

~~~

_Something slams against the house._

_You jolt and wheel around, nearly tripping over your own feet. The rain has stopped, you realize suddenly, and all the drapes are down. Had they been before?_

_“It’s getting noisy out there, isn’t it?”_

_Tai is gone and Raven now crosses her arms, resting her weight on one leg. She smirks without humor and your eyes narrow. You should probably ask what’s going on or where exactly you are, but there’s a part of your heart that knows it just doesn’t matter. It’s over for you. Beyond over. It’s too late and the only thing that matters now is—_

_“Where’s Ruby?”_

_Your sister shrugs._

_“You can’t help her.”_

_“That wasn’t my question.”_

_But she doesn’t respond again. You don’t have time for any more bouts of silence. It’s all becoming clearer and clearer, the longer you stand there. Trembling, you jab a thumb over your shoulder at the door, and rasp._

_“…Is she out there?”_

_You know she’s heard you because her eyes flicker. Raven steps away from the archway and saunters into the living room. You grind your teeth and nearly see red._

_“ANSWER ME, RAVEN—“_

_She walks out of the shadows and her hair is gold._

_“She is,” Yang says and that’s all you need._

_Spinning around, you make for the door. You’re a hair’s breadth away from yanking it open when another voice calls to you. Softer than Tai’s or Raven’s or Yang’s. Slow and gentle. Too brave for its own good. You don’t want to turn around._

_But of course you do._

_“Qrow,” Summer says, “Why are you still trying?”_

_She is how you will always remember her. How she was at the end of the end. Dark-haired and smiling and twenty-six for eternity. It takes far too long for you to find your voice again._

_“Because…she needs me to.”_

__Because she’s scared and a kid and you would’ve tried too.

_Summer folds her hands, eyes unreadable._

_“Why should you care?”_

_“Do you even have to ask that?”_

_“You had your chance,” she says, mouth relaxed and without anger, “I waited for you for such a long time. You chose missions, Ozpin, self-loathing, misery. Everything, Qrow. Everything but me.”_

_Color drains from your face. The words hit every mark they’re intended for, each one long weakened with the knowledge that she’s right. That at some point in your grand mess of a life, you had touched happiness, held it glowing in your hands and threw it away for no better reason than because you were afraid._

_“I know,” you croak, “I’m sorry.”_

_Summer’s expression is empty. She does not resent you. She does not forgive you._

_“I wanted revenge for my parents. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t let that go. Not for Yang or Tai. Not even for Ruby,” her eyes flash, almost sad, “But I would’ve done it for you, Qrow. If you had stayed. I would’ve given it up happily.”_

_You swallow, heart knotting up and god, you’re dead aren’t you? How can it still fucking hurt like this?_

_“I’m sorry.”_

_“I loved you.”_

_“I know.”_

_You talk like a broken record and Summer shakes her head._

_“Then prove it.”_

_She’s in front of you, one slender hand ghosting across the line of your jaw. Your eyes widen, skin prickling. She’s beautiful. Some deep, guilty corner of your soul has never stopped thinking it._

_“Stay with me this time,” she whispers and you smell roses. You can’t remember if she actually did smell like roses, but it’s the scent she has now._

_“Give up,” the words are as petal soft as her lips, “What can you do anymore?”_

_Summer leans in and those eyes glitter in the shadows. Silver and white. Legend and rubble. Power beyond imagining that had only condemned her. You can’t count how many nights you’d lied awake, just wishing the Silver Eyes didn’t exist. Just wishing the bloodline would dry up all on its own, so children to come would know the meaning of peace._

_It hurt to look at Ruby, because she reminded you that you could have nothing. That you couldn’t save her mother from her fate and you can’t ever save Ruby from hers._

_You touch Summer’s shoulder and stop her._

_“Maybe nothing. Maybe she never really did need me. She’s as strong as you were, perhaps even more, and I know she’ll be fine. The truth is, I don’t think I can help her either.”_

_The delicate brows furrow. The first glimmer of emotion ripples across Summer’s soft, pale face._

_“Then why?”_

_Your smile is tired and small._

_“Because I died in the lamest way imaginable. And I never even said goodbye.”_

_And then you let her go. This woman you had loved for almost all your life, so fiercely and helplessly that the pain had left a shape. Summer falters slightly, leg shifting as if she wants to take a step forward._

_“You don’t know what this is, Qrow. You don’t know where you are or how that thing has tied you here. If you let her escape…if you let her kill it, then who knows what will happen to you”_

_You arch an eyebrow, but you don’t ask what ‘thing’ she’s referring to. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all._

_“Dust to dust, Rose. I know where I’ll go.”_

_Summer just stares, something contemplative in her eyes. She doesn’t try to stop you._

_“Is she worth this much, Qrow? You would risk oblivion or hellfire or a fathomless eternity in the darkness for one little girl?”_

_You don’t even answer that._

_Turning, you reach for the door._

~~~

The Grimm’s face is showing, one bone white corner of its mask puncturing through the hairline. It sluices off human skin like a chrysalis shell, dripping sludge and smog. 

Bile surges up Ruby’s throat. Her stomach is clenched in a fist of ice. She can almost see the frantic beat of her heart, pulsing in terror at the edge of her vision. The blank thought that she is about to die spins around and around in her skull.

_Thought you could escape that way?_

Half of the small, fish-shaped lips form from behind globs of flesh. They still don’t move though, not even as the voice shivers through her thoughts.

_I’ve already told you, Ruby Rose._

_**Nothing for you in there.** _

It charges up the porch steps and this time, Ruby can’t hold it back and screams. 

_Someone, anyone, Yang, Daddy…!_

A child curls up in the snow, hands clenched in her hair, eyes squeezed shut.

_Uncle Qrow…_

~~~

_“She isn’t yours.” Summer says._

_You grab the knob and pull._

~~~

Ruby pitches backwards.

She hardly registers the fall, the stumble of her legs over sill and threshold. There is a roar that rattles every bone in her body, a _NO_ that shatters the clouds, the sky, and is not human at all. 

A monster scrabbles for her on all fours, one spidery hand outstretched. It moves as if through molasses, the world bursting apart behind it. Everything shrinks away further and further, framed only by the doorway as she’s tugged into the house.

Someone holds her.

For a moment, someone holds her.

~~~ 

_You are scattering already. You can feel it—the pieces of your essence fraying like worn-out rope. The windows leak with light and the house starts to crumble, cracks webbing across plaster, knocking over photos and chinaware._

_Summer is gone_

_But Ruby is here._

_You wrap your arms around her as close as you can. She’s dazed, trying to lift her head and you have no time. No time._

_You bring her close._

~~~

“I’d do it again,” a voice whispers, fingers brushing across her cheek, words spilling out so fast they stumble. 

“I would die for you over and over in a million different ways and never regret a thing. I love you, little rose, and I’m sorry. It’s okay to be afraid.”

She gropes through the blinding colors for something to touch. 

~~~ 

_A small hand grabs your shirt. You can’t even feel it._

_Your arms are fading, but you bear her weight as long as you can. Black flecks your vision and you cling to the sight of her—the dark locks of hair, the stormy wells of her eyes. In another world somewhere, another time, she could’ve been yours…_

_…But that isn’t right, is it?_

_You don’t regret letting Summer go. You loved her, but you don’t regret it. Tai gave her a good life with a good man. He gave her happiness and he gave her this kid. You won’t ever regret that._

_And she_ had _been yours._

_You bring misfortune. You’ve done terrible things._

_You weren’t her father, but she had been_ yours.

~~~

“Thank you, Ruby,” the voice says, hushed, breaking, “god, I never…thank you for being a part of my life.”

There is light. 

There is _light_.

Ruby cannot describe the sound she hears then. Like the whole world is shattering, like she is being hurled into the eye of the sun. Into the bottomless vacuum of space. 

The hands holding her are gone.

“Now go give it hell.”


	17. XVII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/n: AND THAT'S ALL FOLKS! Thank you everyone for the amazing support and encouragement I've received on this fic! I hope this final chapter will give you some of the closure and relief that I tried to give Ruby.
> 
> As for future fics, I've kind of drifted away from the RWBY fandom, but with Volume 6 coming out soon, I might be back again, who knows.
> 
> Regardless, please drop a review if you can and hope you enjoy!

**XVII.**

~~~

Yang is cradling her blistered hand and weighing the possibility of stomping the door in like a paper box when it opens on its own.

…Well, that's an understatement. It actually _fucking explodes._

There's no real way to aptly describe the things that burst up from inside. She thinks "geyser of darkness" comes the closest, but is too busy loosing her footing and having the roof collapse beneath her to really know.

Spewing a violent string of swears, Yang manages to flip herself enough to aim Ember Celica at the ground and somersault into a semi-safe landing. Dust fans out around her calves, as bits of gravel and concrete tumble and echo in her ears. She assumes she's back in the dank, mold-ridden cold of the lab, but it's _pitch black_. Almost literally. Even though she's quite certain there's no ceiling anymore and the sky should've flooded the place with daylight.

"…Guys?" she mutters, tensing when she gets no reply.

Yang widens her stance. She hates more than anything being unable to see, but her other senses are already sharpening to compensate. There's a wretched smell in the air, an ugly mix of rot and mildew.

And the darkness _moves_. It feels almost viscous, as if she's submerged in sludge, and something is swimming around and around her.

_This is it_

She jolts at the voice, echoing at her shoulder, her ear, inside the walls of her skull.

_I'm coming for you_

Yang spins around, hair nearly flying in her face. There is…a shadow in the shadows, a degree darker in shade than its surroundings, if that were even possible. It's erect and waiffishly-thin. It almost resembles a person, but Yang only needs to see its head once to strike that theory out of her mind forever.

A Grimm mask clamps over the top half of its face. The mouth is open, a shivering abyss creased into a sneer. All breath escapes from Yang's lungs and she thinks for a thunderous second that she is staring into her own death, before the creature turns away.

_End of the line, flower child_

Two different hands grab Yang by the shoulders. Blue and golden eyes peer into her face with alarm and there's a second in which Yang's standing through no strength of her own.

She opens her mouth to whisper they should run. That whatever she had just seen, it is out of their league. They need to run before it notices them, find Jaune and the others, because Ruby _can't_ be down this way. She can't be.

_You should have listened to me_

"No."

Yang flinches as if she's been struck. The voice is quiet and childishly high, but glows like a crystal at its center. The hands jolt off her shoulders, equally surprised. They turn as one in its direction and then there are a pair of eyes shining in the dark. Blinding white. Sleek as silver.

"Never again," the voice says and Yang's lips part.

~~~

Ruby is afraid.

Outside of the illusion, the Grimm looks nowhere as endless or gargantuan, but is twice as horrifying. Wicked black breath trails from its mouth and its body seems to have grown wider, stretching open narrow crooked shoulders and a crunching, elongated spine.

It is not amused anymore. The face contorts into a snarl and Ruby can suddenly imagine every single soul that has perished in its claws.

_You should have listened to me_

Ruby unfolds Crescent Rose, raising it in front of her. It shakes in her grasp, the handle slick with her sweat.

"No."

She is afraid.

"Never again."

"RUBY!"

The voice is crisp and golden. It sounds as unbelievable as a dream. Ruby's heart skips a beat.

"Sis, is that you? Ruby, it's Yang!"

_Yang…_

She catches the creature surge towards her from the corner of an eye. There is one second where the Grimm is only rot and bones, and the next where it's smooth skin and soft, dark hair. Eyes of amber pierce into her, the full lips twisted into a smirk.

"Don't look away from me," Cinder whispers and its sound is as elegant and heartless as Ruby remembers it.

She yelps and skids backwards, dodging a violent swipe from Cinder's molten-hot blade. She has to scramble to dodge a second time.

"Ruby?" Yang calls out again, more unsure now, "…Are you there?"

"Get out of here!"

Ruby's heart is racing. _You shouldn't be here, Yang…_

Cinder walks through the dark on clacking heels, the diamonds of her anklette chiming with each step. Blood flecks her beautiful, wicked face. Ashes and ember blow through the cracks of her fingers.

"About time you finally answered me! God, where are you? You are in so much fucking trouble, I can't even—"

"I said get out!" Ruby snaps, and parries another blow that strikes right to the center of her bone. "You can't be here!"

"No way!" Yang is starting to sound angry. "And leave you here alone? Keep dreaming!"

Ruby bites her lip, fighting back a cry of pain when Cinder's blade hits the staff of Crescent Rose, blistering her palms with the heat. She shoves her back and runs, praying there aren't any snags or pieces of debris to trip her underfoot.

The field of her vision is going slightly white with panic again—a stark, but just as blinding contrast to the sweeping black of her surroundings. She can't bear the thought that Yang is here somewhere. That someone as radiant and warm as her sister might perish in the dark.

"Get out of here. _Get out…_ "

It slips out before she even thinks about saying it. Before she even realizes she's thinking it.

"…I deserve to be alone."

She can just picture Yang's face though; the worry and disbelief swirling in her expression. Ruby only means to convince her to go, but what pours out instead aches and stings as fiercely as the truth.

"For failing Penny and Pyrrha. For letting all those people down…"

"What are you talking about?" Yang sounds bewildered, like she's trying to grope through the dark towards her, "Where are you?"

Ruby shakes her head pointlessly. She squeezes Crescent Rose and the hot flush of tears rises again.

"I deserve to be alone."

"You're not—"

"He's really dead, isn't he?"

A sharp silence.

Then…

"Yes," Yang whispers, "He is."

Ruby swallows, feeling the words lodge into the pit of her stomach, making her sick, making her dizzy.

"He's gone forever," she croaks, "No matter what I say or what I do. No m-matter what I want."

"Ruby…"

"I hurt him, Yang."

"…What?"

Her sister sounds closer now than she was before. Or maybe further away. Ruby can't pinpoint anything in this sweltering, shuffling darkness. A smile tilts her lips, hollow and pale.

"I know he tried. I know he always tried, but he just couldn't separate me from Mom. From the reminder that he couldn't save her and…" She pauses, then shuts her eyes with a sigh.

"Sometimes…sometimes, I wonder if that's why he stayed for as long as he did. Because it was his way of…punishing himself. I wonder if…i-if he loved me only out of guilt. If every time he looked at me, he was really just—"

"That's not true." Yang's voice is brusque, almost disappointed. "That's not _true_ , Ruby. How can you even think that?"

She's silent, the shame inside her heart already swelling. But Yang is not finished.

"He stayed because he _cared_ , sis. Because we were the family he chose. He didn't love you, because he felt obligated to. He loved you because of _you._ And he would never want you to be alone. I swear he'd have kicked your little ass just for thinking it. Any of them would have."

The tears are falling again. Ruby feels them drip off her chin and clenches her teeth, breath coming in short, desperate gasps. Her heart aches like nothing of this world. She can't stop the tide of memories that flood her head; the touch of gentle hands and soft eyes, the crooked grin of amusement, the fond one of pride.

She remembers a voice telling her that it would never regret a thing. That it was okay to be afraid.

_Thank you for being a part of my life…_

A monster leaps from the darkness.

"There you are," Cinder hisses, "Enough is enough, girl. No more games."

Then she evaporates in a plume of black smoke. When it clears, serrated teeth are in her place, black hair and pasty skin and eyes seeped with venom. The scorpion's tail loops across one shoulder, whole again, segments shining like polished stones.

Tyrian laughs and laughs and laughs.

He strikes out, hand a blur of nails and knuckles, and grabs Ruby by the throat. She gags instantly, forgetting for a fatal millisecond to sweep outwards with Crescent Rose and has the scythe kicked brutally out of her grasp.

"Don't fret, flower child," Tyrian says, jaw detaching, opening into an abysmal darkness, "You'll see your uncle very soon."

The spidery fingers around her neck squeeze and Ruby sees a burst of color, a river of stars. She scrabbles and scratches at the hand crushing her windpipe, but it's as immoveable as bedrock.

It certainly isn't her that makes it let go.

"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY SISTER, YOU FREAK!"

The resounding bang of a gunshot and a snarl of agony. Ruby drops to the floor in a heap and scrambles back up as fast as she can, even as she's still hacking for breath.

The first thing she realizes is that she can see. The entire space in fact is rippling and soaked in white light. She sees the Grimm, still clothed in Tyrian's mad, slathering skin and the metal walls of the lab hung thick with cobwebs. She sees Yang seething, crimson-eyed, merely twenty feet away. And next to her Ruby sees…

She sees…

"God, Yang, are you crazy? You could've hit her!"

"That was reckless, Yang. Stupid even…you're lucky it was effective."

Ruby stops breathing.

~~~

"…Weiss? Blake?"

Four pairs of eyes meet. Lilac and gold and blue and glittering silver. A knotted silence without time to untangle.

"Hmph," Weiss says, "Once again, it looks like you've gotten yourself into some kind of mess."

The words have so little bite in them that they don't even register as an insult. Blake sends her a chiding glance anyway.

"We're sorry for leaving you, Ruby," she whispers, face soft, full of regret and sincerity, "But we're here now, and we're not going anywhere again."

Ruby's eyes widen. Their glow increases, washing everything down in its illumination. The Grimm squeals and for a moment, curls inward to shield its face and torso.

Yang grins.

"Let's keep moving forward, sis. Together and always."

Ruby is silent. She wants to reach out and hold them in her arms, run her hands through their hair and confirm for herself that this is real.

_You are not alone…_

The Grimm roars and finally decides to charge, Tyrian's ghostly face melting away. Ruby turns to meet it.

The world dissolves into light.

~~~

There is a little girl standing alone in the snow. Her dark hair cropped short, a blush painting her cheeks. She is crying and a red cloak soaks up her tears.

The shadow of the Grimm stands frozen behind her, still wearing dark hair and pallid skin, metal rings and rust-red eyes.

Ruby kneels, brushing the bangs from the child's face. Identical silver eyes shine back at her, a white light hugging the tips of long lashes.

"That's not him," Ruby says, at last, "That's not him and it won't ever be."

"No, you're wrong," the girl sniffles, "You're wrongwrongwrongwrong—"

"I'm not."

Silence.

Ruby bites her lip, heart pounding so hard against her ribs she can feel it breaking, "I want to be. I-I wish I was. God, I…but you can see it too. Look at him. He has his mouth but not his smile. He has his eyes but not his soul. Look at him."

He was standing right there and yet it wasn't him. It wouldn't ever be. It could not hope to capture all the little details and imperfections that had made up her Uncle Qrow. It was not him. Not in the inches, or the wisps. Not in a single speck of dust.

Ruby takes a long, quiet breath.

"We need to let him go now."

The girl hugs herself close, mouth flattening. "…But I'll miss him."

"I'll miss him too."

"But I'm afraid."

"It's okay to be afraid."

"I'll never see him again," the glowing eyes are tearless, the pale face is streaked, "He promised to always be there for me. How could he tell me such a lie? How could I never see him again?"

"But we will," Ruby whispers, "We will, don't you remember? We'll hear his footsteps in the rain and his laugh in the wind. He'll be in every blade of grass, every flake of snow."

She lifts her hand, pressing over the tiny beating heart.

"And maybe this is a little cliché, but…we'll keep him here too. Always."

The child's face crumples. She balls her hands into stubborn fists.

"That was just a story. It was something he made up long ago. It isn't true."

Ruby smiles and stands. She offers her hand.

"We'll never know, will we? Staying here the way things are."

Silver eyes stare up at her, wrinkling with confusion and sadness and fear, all those feelings that had almost rended Ruby in two. The girl stands as well.

Small fingers touch her palm.

They take one last look together. At the rust-red eyes and sweeping black hair. At the tattered cape flaking into the wind. For a second, they see only home.

But it isn't home.

They are taking home with them.

Nothing is left behind save footprints in the snow.

~~~

_The Grimm grabs for the child, terror rippling through every one of its fibers. This girl needs to die...she needs to die. For the moment, not even the Queen's cold and terrible whispers can make it believe otherwise. With twitching, jolting fingers, it claws for the soft open skin of her throat. It will kill her. Here, in this old place seeped in the despair of ages, it will—_

_Her eyes snap open wide and crackle with power. The spirits of her lineage, more ancient than she can likely comprehend, are stirring awake, thirsting for black blood._

_NONONO_

_The Grimm hisses, and gropes for the final lingering strands of Qrow Branwen's aura, melding it in its hands, trying to give it shape, clutching it like a hostage._

_Her pupils fill with glowing light-white wings spread across the Grimm's bloody eyes. The girl's jaw tightens, face drained and colorless. The light is here and there's no more time._

_"You kill me," The Grimm snarls, "And he is dead for good. Do you understand? You will have nothing."_

_For a second, the girl's expression seems to flicker and weaken. An icy ripple of glee goes through the Grimm. Foolish, simpering child-_

__"I had the stories," _she whispers,_ "The birthdays and the walks home and all the phone calls from far away."

_Her hand raises, each digit stretching toward the pit of the Grimm's chest._

"I had my time," _the girl says,_ "And it will have to be enough."

_The wings pierce forward, screaming from her eyes and across her extended hand. Closer closercloser-_

_The Grimm shrieks, all grasping function of nerves lost, and tries to flee. Its limbs won't move, weighted down by some hard force of will._

~~~

_The light comes._

_It finally comes._

~~~

The aftermath is a jumbling rush of hugs and tears, sirens and shouting.

Ruby barely recalls how they make it outside, but Jaune, Nora and Ren are already there, the latter two babbling at warp-speed to a couple of the Atlesian guards about a strange machine they'd seen inside.

Taiyang is waiting as well. He looks no worse for wear, slightly cut up and lower lip busted. His face is ashen with relief when he sees them and he grips Ruby hard enough to bruise ribs. She doesn't even care, hugging her father back just as fiercely.

Yang, Weiss and Blake hover around her in a circle. They all touch a lot more than they had back at Beacon. Perhaps they knew Ruby needed it. Or perhaps they needed it just as much too.

Jaune only smiles, squeezing her shoulder. He pulls from his pouch a shimmering cloak, red as roses and rich as blood, and drapes it around her.

"It's okay now, Ruby," so many different voices promise, "You're going to be okay."

Ruby closes her eyes.

For the first time in so very long, she thinks she can believe it at last.

~~~

_**fin.** _


End file.
